Wigan Warriors’ Christian Wade on his first rugby league experience, future options and why his switch was seven years in the making

Christian Wade has revealed his switch from rugby union to rugby league has been seven years in the making. The Gloucester winger has penned a short-term deal with Wigan Warriors and will make the switch to the 13-man code at the end of the Premiership season.

That switch will come in June, with Wade set to spend the rest of the Super League season with the Cherry and Whites. However, it seems a move to league could have come much earlier for the 33-year-old, with Wade revealing he has turned down several offers to make the move in the past.

Which teams those offers came from remain undisclosed but Wade says league clubs showed an interest once he had made the switch to the NFL to represent Buffalo Bills.

“Back in 2018 when I decided to leave rugby and go to America to make a team in the NFL that’s when rugby league started to approach me,” he told BBC podcast Rugby Union Weekly. “I had a few offers to come across but at that time I’d just made a massive decision to leave rugby union, so rugby league or doing anything else wasn’t really in my mind.

“It was just offers I didn’t take any real interest in. When I came back to union on France offers started coming in again and once I found out that I wasn’t going to be at Gloucester, that’s when I went to market the opportunity came around. Wigan approached me and it felt like the right time. For it’s been seven years in the making.”

In regards to the Wigan move, Wade added: “Talks probably started at the end of February and two or three weeks ago I signed officially.”

Christian Wade blow away by first Wigan Warriors experience as he discusses contract options

Wade attended Friday’s clash with St Helens at the Brick Community Stadium and he was presented to the crowd as his deal was announced by the club. It was Wade’s first experience of the Wigan crowd and he was blown away by the experience of it.

“It’s incredible,” he added. “They had a fan village set up outside the stadium, there’s a couple of pubs on the same complex that were packed out and the fans were just going crazy. Already it felt like a different experience that I haven’t had at club rugby.

“Going into the stadium the fans are piling in and it was almost like a football match with the away stand and all the Wigan fans on the other side. The noise was building and when I went down to the field the atmosphere was going crazy and when they announced I’d signed there was a big roar. I didn’t know if these people knew who I am and I felt a bit awkward but it was a big welcome from the fans.

“Even at the end when they sealed the deal with that final try, you could see the St Helens fans leaving the stadium, everyone was standing up and I won’t repeat what they were saying but it was football chants and waving them of and I was like ‘yo, this is class, I could get used to this’.

“It’s a completely different experience to rugby, there’s no malice in it but it’s more like a football feel, the fans are involved the whole game. I’ve never seen anything like it in a rugby environment.”

Asked about what the future holds beyond the end of the rugby league season, Wade says he could be open to extending his deal in the 13-man game with Wigan Warriors: “My contract is five months and depending on how that goes, there could be talks of extending or looking at coming back to rugby union. I’ll leave my options open.”