Ashton Sings for the Saints and England.

The home crowd at Franklin’s Gardens were singing “When The Saints Go Marching In” as England’s latest star, winger Chris Ashton, continued his hot scoring streak for Northampton as they battered Perpignan in a crucial and penultimate Heineken Cup pool game victory.

One Northampton fan stayed silent, however, even though everyone around him was singing, and that fan was Ashton’s father, Kevin.

It is hard enough when your dream is to see your own son play for the Wigan Warriors rugby league team and then, when this dream has been realised, be told that he is off to “the other side” that is union.

But to then be forced to endure the song that all his life signified his beloved Wigan’s bitterest rivals? Well, that’s bordering on cruel.

Ashton junior is laughing as he explains. “”When the Saints Go Marching In” may be Northampton’s signature song,” says the man whose hunger for the try-line has propelled him straight into the England senior squad in this, his third season in union since switching codes. “But it also happens to be St Helens’s song as well, and my Dad now has to sit through it over and over again sitting in the Franklin’s stands. He loves watching me play, he’s proud of what I’ve achieved, and he never misses a home game, but there’s no way he’s going to sing that song.”

Just imagine the scene, then, three years’ ago, when a 19-year-old Ashton broke the news to his father. “It was almost a case of “sit down Dad, pour yourself a drink, I’ve got some bad news,”” recounts the Guinness Premiership’s leading try scorer this season. “It nearly killed him when I said I was leaving Wigan to join Northampton. All he ever wanted was to see his son in the hoops of Wigan, and now I was off to union. I could have told him I’d accidentally got a girl pregnant and he would have seen it as better news. To his credit he let me get on with it, but it’s taken him time to come round to it. I reckon making the England squad might just swing it.”

Hopefully it will with the Wigan public, too, who were none too pleased with their young hero’s bombshell. “I remember getting booed every time I caught the ball in my next game for Wigan, and I’m sure it wasn’t all from the away fans, either. I’d take a lot of stick on nights out in the town as well.”

In truth it was quite a decision to make for the young man who was dubbed the new Kris Radlinski in rugby league. “I didn’t want to be one of those people who stay in the same place all their life,” he explains. “I knew that if it went wrong I’d be young enough to come back, but if I’d signed another contract I probably wouldn’t have tried union until it was too late.”

A relegated Northampton meant that Ashton could find his feet in his first season in Division One where he scored a record 39 tries. “In truth it hid my deficiencies because I could get away with it at that level,” he recalls. “But when we went up to the Premiership I was exposed last season.”

The confidence sapped, and when he found himself out of the starting XV at the start of this season, Ashton’s mind began to wander back to what he had left behind at Wigan.

“I thought I was ready to go back,” he admits. “I was prepared to go cap in hand and say I’d got it wrong. I didn’t feel it was ever going to go right for me at Northampton.”

So why didn’t he return to league? “I just didn’t want to be another league star who’d come over to union, failed, and gone back to league,” he says. “There’s been quite a few and I didn’t want to add to that statistic. If I’d returned to Wigan I would have been very disappointed in myself at some point in my life.”