Former England star Ashton - 'It would be good to see all-northern hemisphere semi-finals'

Comments from former England winger Chris Ashton on Friday ahead of England's quarter-final against Fiji at Stade de Marseille on Sunday, 15 October.

On what he reads into England’s struggles against Samoa in their final pool match:

“Samoa game is probably a difficult one to judge on, just because England weren’t great. It looked like everybody had it in their minds that they know they’d qualified and that Fiji was coming up. I wouldn’t  be surprised that they had been doing a little bit of prep for Fiji too.

“Samoa were great. They got ahead, got their noses in front, so good on them, but definitely the focus is on this week and Fiji, so it’s hard to take anything from the Samoa game.

“The advantage of England is that they’ve been able to have a break and see their families, go off and spend a couple of days on holiday and just relax and have some down time, where the Fiji boys have been away for ages - months, since the warm-ups they’ve been away. It’s tough. Then you hear about the emotion and the stuff that’s coming out of the camp, so it’s a hard place for those boys to be, but they’re in a quarter-final, so if they need any motivation just to keep going, that will be it.”

On whether it’s difficult to assess England’s varied performances at this World Cup:

“We’ve seen a lot of changes, we’ve seen lads that have been banned that are quite influential people, with Owen [Farrell] and Billy [Vunipola] and Tom Curry. So they’ve lost consistency there.

“I think the positive is that they’ve got a lot of experienced players in the team [for whom] this is going to be their last World Cup, they know what’s involved this weekend. England want to get into a semi-final, that is all that really matters.”

On Billy Vunipola saying England are happy to be public enemy number one against Fiji:

“It doesn’t really come into their thinking at all really. I know Billy said that, just because Billy loves to say something sometimes, say what he’s thinking, but it won’t come into the planning of the game.

“That’s generally the way it is [for] anyone against England sometimes, and Billy saying stuff like that doesn’t help (laughs).

“It is generally always the way, but if anyone is going to have a second team - Fiji are my second team. They have the best athletes, they’re just freakish players, so anyone who has a second team, Fiji would be the one.”

On whether he thinks we will see all four semi-finalists from the Six Nations:

“It would be great. That’s what I’d like to see anyway. It would be amazing really, just to show how far we’ve come in the last three or four years, especially France and Ireland leading the way.

“We all know that England and Wales have had an easier side of the draw, but if all four to get through, it’s just great for northern hemisphere rugby. We have obviously learned a lot from the southern hemisphere and taken it one the step [at a time]. Especially France and Ireland, the way that France have turned around the past two or three years, and then Ireland under Andy Farrell just taking it on more and being world number one. It would be good to see and I really do think it’s possible.”

On the conundrum of fitting George Ford and Owen Farrell in the same team:

“We’ve probably seen that England can’t play both, it doesn’t really lend itself to working necessarily right now. Owen is captain and they both lead their teams at home in England with them being in charge.

“They get on really well, so I don’t think there’s anything in between them, they just have different styles. With Owen being captain and being so influential in English rugby for so long, I think he’s just the go-to for Steve [Borthwick]. Steve’s talking very highly about Owen and the way he thinks and the how he leads the team and how he trains. 

“I think we’re going to see Owen in there at 10, with George doing his thing off the bench. It seems odd because we haven’t seen Owen really at all this tournament, but with Steve picking him as captain so early on, it seems like that was always going to happen.

“With Owen it’s the way that he leads training and leads the team in and around the place. It’s kind of similar to having Alun Wyn [Jones] around in Wales. You have a big personality, a big player who’s captain.

“Right now, that is the situation, so Steve wants to stick with him.”