Leicester Tigers: Chris Ashton 'comforted' to be among the oldest Premiership backline
- Published
Ex-England winger Chris Ashton joined Leicester at the age of 34 in February 2022
Leicester Tigers' Chris Ashton says it was "comforting" to be among the oldest backline ever assembled to start a Premiership game.
On the wing at 35, Ashton was the third oldest of a backline with an average age of 33 years and four months in Sunday's win against Saracens.
Mike Brown had said scoring on his Tigers debut at the age of 37 "sends a message" that age is no barrier.
"It put me a little bit at ease in some ways," Ashton told BBC Radio Leicester.
"You know the lads are experienced, they know how to get themselves in the right place to play a team like Saracens.
"You just have that trust because of the experience.
"But they are not only experienced, they are good players. In most teams in my career you might have had one, maybe two players who had experience at that age.
"So to have that many in the backline was comforting for me really that people would make the right decisions at the the right moments."
Interim Leicester head coach Richard Wigglesworth, who was playing for Tigers at the age of 39 in December before retiring to take the Tigers helm, smiled when he called his backline "the old brigade".
Jimmy Gopperth, the oldest active Premiership player at 39 who credits surfing for his longevity, made his 200th Premiership appearance.
Matt Scott made his 50th start for Tigers at 32, while 33-year scrum-half and England's most capped men's player Ben Youngs was back from international duty.
Wigglesworth spoke from personal experience about what it takes for the oldest of his veterans to star as they did in a replay of last season's Premiership final.
"It's harder when you are older, only because you have done it for so long," he said.
"Do you want to train in the same way, do you want to keep adapting, do want to keep trying to move your game on and do you have the hunger to turn up to every cold training session, every early morning and every night away?
"If you have and you are lucky, then you have a chance. All the guys mentioned in our old brigade are like that."