LONG READ Why English rugby needs Christian Wade and his Mission 102

Christian Wade’s stated aim is to break the Premiership’s all-time try-scoring record when he returns to rugby union.

Will he do it? Or, at 34, will age defeat the prolific wing?

It would be a remarkable achievement if he could, considering he missed five prime seasons, first chasing his American football dream and then playing across the Channel in France.

Wade’s return to Gloucester last season was well timed, coming as it did just as the Cherry and Whites were spectacularly widening their horizons. Eleven tries in 14 Premiership appearances followed.

It looks like he has chosen his moment smartly again in joining a Newcastle side who are only going to go one way after the Red Bull buyout.

If he is to break the record, with the clock ticking on his time at the top, this season would seem to represent his best chance of doing so.

A December arrival date at Kingston Park is not ideal but the way the fixtures fall he should only miss six league games. That leaves the former Lion another 12 in the regular season. Eight tries in 12 games to match Ashton, nine to beat him? Don’t rule it out with his strike rate.

If Wade doesn’t get there, English rugby could be twiddling its thumbs for some time waiting for anyone else to challenge Chris Ashton’s mark of 101.

If Wade doesn’t get there, English rugby could be twiddling its thumbs for some time waiting for anyone else to challenge Chris Ashton’s mark of 101. Danny Care’s retirement means Wade will be the only current player in the top 10.

The leading active players in the PREM, as it will be known from this season, are Max Malins, now back at Saracens, and Leicester’s Ollie Hassell-Collins, who are on 56 tries.

At 28 and 26 respectively both have the time to go close, especially if they can emulate Wade’s longevity. Harlequins wing Cadan Murley, who is also 26, is another potential threat on 54 tries.

The only other players over the 50 mark are a pair of 33-year-olds in Exeter’s Ollie Woodburn (55) and Bath’s Ben Spencer (53).

Maybe Wade makes it, maybe he doesn’t but either way it is a compelling individual narrative that will be good for English rugby. In this day and age, every sport needs these sorts of personal storylines.

Rugby has always been the consummate team sport, one where the collective is everything. As such individualism has often been disapproved of, stamped on even. Goals belong to the team, not the players within it.

When Wade’s signing was announced earlier this week by the Red Bulls, he made it crystal clear what was on his mind in making the move back to union after a brief foray into rugby league.

“I’m coming to get that record,” he said.

He may have added he wanted to be a positive influence within the Newcastle team but, as he emphasised in the same breath: “I’m not going to pretend I don’t want to be the all-time top try-scorer in the league’s history.”

It is not odd in the slightest that Wade is thinking about his numbers – he is only eight tries behind Chris Ashton after all – but making it all about him is a departure for rugby.

Once upon a time, this sort of attitude would most definitely have been frowned upon. No ‘I’ in team and all that. The game would not have worn it.

When Lionel Messi left Paris Saint-Germain, the club’s social media following dropped by almost a million. These were Messi fans, it turned out, not PSG supporters.

But it can no longer just be about whether Bath can defend their title or whether Sale can finally smash the glass ceiling or whether the real Exeter will show up this season.

These big-picture things are important, yes. Who wins the league and who doesn’t is still the point of it all to most of us.

But rugby is having to get its head around a generational change in how the next generation consumes its sport. For Gen Z, even in a team setting, it is all about the individual.

Players’ social media accounts have brought young fans closer to the athletes they admire. Even if much of the content they view is airbrushed and insubstantial, it gives them an affinity with their heroes which often supersedes that of the club they represent.

When Lionel Messi left Paris Saint-Germain, the club’s social media following dropped by almost a million. These were Messi fans, it turned out, not PSG supporters.

Football has always entertained the cult of the individual to some degree but this is not just about football. A similar direction of travel has also been seen in American sports.

It is naive to imagine rugby is immune. So if it wants to keep up it needs to embrace this kind of individualism.

Ilona Maher is showing the benefits that can accrue for the sport if it does. There were more than 7,000 in the crowd at York Community Stadium last weekend for USA against Samoa at the World Cup – a number which would have been unthinkable without her. Her personal Instagram following – 17 times that of USA Rugby – gives her a reach rugby administrators would dream of and she is using it to take the game to a new audience.

Rugby needs more players like Maher who can cut through on an individual level.

The game instinctively still has trouble with this. Witness the reaction to Henry Pollock last season. There were an awful lot of people waiting for him to cop a comeuppance on the back of his ‘look at me’ try celebrations. Pollock’s showmanship stuck in the craw.

You can like or dislike his antics but, undeniably, they drew more eyeballs to him and the game.

It is self-defeating for players and their personalities to be hidden away within the cloying strictures of the team environment.

Rugby remains the ultimate inter-woven sporting pursuit. It still needs every part of a team to function for the individual to shine. It is just as wholesome as it ever was.

It is simply that the new reality of sports-watching, the battle for the attention of the next generation, means it is self-defeating for players and their personalities to be hidden away within the cloying strictures of the team environment.

Rugby has to learn to embrace that.

So when Wade announces he intends to set a personal record as part of his signing announcement, no-one should be complaining. Certainly not anyone at Newcastle. The by-product of Wade scoring tries, after all, is the Red Bulls benefit. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

When he pitches up in the Northeast in mid-winter, we will all be following Mission 102 with interest.