Northampton Saints: Ashton still in plans at Saints
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JIM MALLINDER insists England winger Chris Ashton will be able to fight for his place in the Saints side despite his controversial move to Saracens.
Ashton was left out of the Saints side that endured a 51-36 thrashing by Munster to end their Heineken Cup campaign in front of a sold out stadiummk on Saturday. His omission came after Saracens announced Ashton would be joining them next season, with reports also suggesting a row between the Saints player and Mallinder.
The Saints director of rugby would not go into that, but insisted Ashton is still a part of his squad for the rest of the campaign once his England commitments have finished.
“Chris Ashton goes away now for the week,” said Mallinder. “Hopefully he will get in the England side but that is up to the England coaches to decide.
“If he doesn’t then he comes back to us and he fights for his place. If he does win a place then in eight weeks’ time he comes back and once again he fights for his spot at Saints like everybody else.”
And Mallinder insisted Ashton’s departure to Saracens was not the reason he was left out of the side on Saturday.
“Like any player what you do for selection is sit down with the coaches and you talk about how the players are playing with their form,” said Mallinder. “How they are doing during the week in terms of their physical and mental fitness.
“You look at the opposition and their strengths and weaknesses and then you look at the short, middle and long term in terms of the games coming up.
“You put those all into the ring and you come out with the 23 players who you think are the best players to represent the team.”
Unfortunately for Saints the chosen 23 suffered the club’s worst defeat in Europe for more than a decade to end not only their faint hopes of reaching the Heineken Cup quarter-finals, but the Amlin Challenge Cup knockout stages as well.
But Mallinder dismissed any suggestion that the controversy over Ashton had affected his players, and said: “Not at all. This was decided a long time ago and though Chris only came out with it this week, we have known for a long time that Chris wasn’t going to be at Saints next year.”
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