NEWCASTLE — Christian Wade stands on the brink of Prem Rugby history as Newcastle Red Bulls prepare to welcome Sale Sharks on Friday night (19:45 BST) at Kingston Park. The 35-year-old winger sits on 100 career tries in the competition, one behind Chris Ashton's all-time record of 101, and is level with Tommy Freeman on five tries as the leading try-scorers in the Prem this season after his hat-trick away to Exeter Chiefs last time out made him only the second player to reach a century.
Ashton's mark has stood for over three years — 1,285 days — but Wade insists overtaking his fellow former England winger is not his focus. "I sometimes feel the record is more important to other people than it is to me," he said. "I am someone who is going to score tries. That's what I do. That's what I love to do. But that is the result of the team performing well and us having great cohesion. My main focus is being in that system and executing what we're trying to do. The better we can do, the more tries I'm going to score as a result."
Wade's journey has been anything but conventional. His first Prem try came for Wasps as a teenager in a defeat away to Exeter Chiefs in May 2011 in a side that included England World Cup winners Josh Lewsey and Simon Shaw, and he went on to score 82 tries for Wasps while finishing as the Prem's leading try-scorer outright or jointly in 2012-13, 2016-17 and 2017-18, though a title eluded him when Wasps were beaten by Exeter in the 2017 final at Twickenham. In 2018 he headed Stateside to join NFL outfit Buffalo Bills via the International Player Pathway, featuring in pre-season and on the practice squad but never playing a full NFL game before his release after three seasons, before two seasons with Racing 92 in Paris where he scored 10 tries, a single season at Gloucester with 11 Prem tries that took him above Mark Cueto and alongside former Wasps team-mate Tom Varndell into joint second, nine adrift of Ashton, and a six-month spell in rugby league with Wigan Warriors.
Now just under a year into his spell at Newcastle, Wade has found sharp form again despite the Red Bulls losing all three of their opening Prem matches. He scored only two tries last season as Newcastle finished bottom, but after signing a 12-month extension to stay at Kingston Park under head coach Dan McFarland and attack coach Stephen Jones — his old Wasps team-mate and Wales legend — he has five tries in three Prem games this term, with two against last season's champions Northampton and three against runners-up Exeter. He credits a tip from former Wasps and England centre Riki Flutey to "invest in your own team off the field" after a serious foot injury following the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour, building an off-field team of physio and trainer he still works with today, an approach he said was accentuated in America where "everyone had that".
International recognition has largely eluded one of the Prem's sharpest finishers. Wade won his one and only Test away to Argentina in June 2013 under Stuart Lancaster before being called up as an injury replacement for that summer's British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, but injury ruled him out of that year's Autumn Internationals and he slipped down the pecking order as England built towards the 2015 World Cup. At Kingston Park on Friday, however, history is within immediate reach.