Older and wiser, Chris Ashton waits in wings for another England chance

Chris Ashton turned 28 on Sunday.

“It’s supposed to be your prime, isn’t it?”
he says in the canteen at Saracens’ wet and weary training ground.

“This
week will be unbelievable, apparently.

” What about the rest of the year,
though? Has the player whose international career morphed from swan dive to
nosedive come of belated age? Has a man periodically perceived as vain and
arrogant grown up?

When Stuart Lancaster dropped the winger from his elite playing squad in
October, it seemed like journey’s end.

He had been half of the England
coach’s first wing combination, alongside Da…