Christian Wade's 97 Prem tries are split between three clubs

The opening week of the new Prem season was all about tries, tries, tries as the league's 10 teams went on all-out attack.

No fewer than 52 tries were scored across the five matches, setting a record for the opening round of a season, with an average of more than 10 per game and four players claiming hat-tricks as spectators were royally entertained.

Contributing two of those scores was Christian Wade for Newcastle Red Bulls in their 59-26 loss at Northampton Saints, as the veteran winger moves closer to an all-time record.

The 35-year-old is now on 97 career tries in the Prem, only four behind Chris Ashton's record mark of 101.

If Wade stays fit and the Red Bulls continue to play a game where they want to get the ball wide, it's surely only a matter of time before the record is in his hands.

Listen to commentary from BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Radio Leicester

Wade returned to rugby union last December with Newcastle after a short spell in rugby league with Wigan Warriors and he made no secret of his desire to chase down Ashton's tally.

He only added two last season as the Red Bulls struggled at the bottom, but his two tries on the opening night away to the champions suggest new-look Newcastle are going to be nothing if not entertaining.

It is more than 15 years since Wade scored his first try in Prem Rugby for Wasps but anyone watching his efforts at Franklin's Gardens would not have seen a player of diminishing powers - rather, they would have admired the enduring speed and slipperiness of the Newcastle winger.

"Christian bounces across in front of people where they can't lay a finger on him," Red Bulls head coach Dan McFarland told BBC Sport.

"He can accelerate through a hole and defenders find it very difficult to cope with that."

101 - Chris Ashton (Northampton, Saracens, Sale, Harlequins, Worcester, Leicester)

69 - Paul Sackey (Bedford, London Irish, Wasps, Harlequins)

Chris Ashton's swan dive was a regular sight in the English top flight for more than 15 years

Wade's Prem tries have come for Wasps, Gloucester and now Newcastle across a globetrotting 15-year career.

His sporting journey has also taken in a spell in France with Racing 92 in the Top 14, the 13-man code with Wigan and more than three years in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills, even though he never made it into their main squad.

And that period in America has left an indelible mark, according to his new head coach, as to why Wade remains a feared Prem opponent.

"Christian Wade is a proper professional," said McFarland. "He spent a few years in the NFL and he's clearly taken a lot from that experience in terms of how to look after himself and how to prepare himself as a rugby player.

"He's a really good team man, he's got a lot of time for the young players. He's always calm, a calming and connecting influence.

"Christian's in our leadership group because of his capacity to be able to connect with people. He's a really good person."

2025-26: 18 - Tommy Freeman (Northampton), Noah Caluori

2024-25: 13 - Gabriel Ibitoye (Bristol), Ollie Hassell-Collins (Leicester)

Tommy Freeman has reached double figures for tries in three of the past five Prem seasons for Northampton

With Wade four short of equalling Ashton's 101 tally and five tries away from breaking it, the current record holder can feel him coming.

The Slough-born winger is the only player in the top 10 still actively playing, but Ashton believes the mark is eventually going to go a long way past 101 with the type of rugby on offer in the modern Prem.

Last year's top try scorers, Northampton and England's Tommy Freeman and Saracens' teenage starlet Noah Caluori both touched down 18 times, the highest season-ending figure for five years, while Caluori's tally included him scoring five tries per match on two separate occasions against Sale Sharks.

Freeman started this campaign with a hat-trick in the same game as Wade's double and that took his career mark to 58, all at the age of 25.

With the England winger having signed a new contract at Saints and their dynamic games delivering tries by the barrel load, could he be the player to eventually take the record?

"It's happening [the record being broken], but it's not going to last long, whoever takes it," Ashton told BBC's Rugby Union Weekly podcast.

"I think it's going to be absolutely blown to smithereens.

"I sat there on Friday and watched Tommy run in another hat-trick and thought he's going to get 20 this year.

"Give him another five or six years at this rate that we're going, oh my goodness. He's 25 and he's on 58! By the age of 30, he'll have 100 plus.

"Christian Wade is missing more tries per game than he is scoring tries but that probably shows where Newcastle's mindset is."