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W. Brian Ashton (born 3 September 1946 in Leigh, Lancashire) is a former rugby union player and the current Head Coach of the England national rugby union team.

Ashton played as a scrum-half, but never represented England — the closest he came was as an unused bench replacement on 15 March 1975 against Scotland.

In the course of his career Ashton played for various teams at various levels, including England North, Barbarians, Lancashire, Tyldesley, Fylde, Orrell, AS Montferrand, Roma, Milan, and England tourists

Ashton has coached rugby at club and international level, and has a reputation as one of the best backs coaches in world rugby.

From 1980–88, Ashton taught history and coached rugby at Stonyhurst College, where Kyran Bracken was a pupil at the time, as was Iain Balshaw some years later. He went on to teach history and coach various sports at King's School Bruton, Somerset in the late 80s and early 90s, where his wife also worked as a teacher.

Ashton, built his credentials on an expansive approach. In his first spell as Head Coach, led Bath to their last domestic trophy in 1996. As Assistant Coach of Bath, under Jack Rowell, he helped establish Bath as the dominant team in English rugby for a decade to the mid-1990s.

He had an brief and unsuccessful spell as National Coach of Ireland from 1997–98. Ashton had been awarded a six year contract by the IRFU but resigned barely 12 months later after a series of disappointing results and against a background where private arguments or disagreements with the team manager, Pat Whelan, were frequently aired in public.

Ashton was Sir Clive Woodward's assistant from 1998 to 2002.

Ashton was the RFU's National Academy Manager from 2002 to 2005. In this role Ashton played a key part in the launch of England Rugby’s National Academy system since its inception in 2002, creating the Junior and Senior National Academies to develop the most talented players at England A, Sevens, Under 21 and Under 19 level.

In 2005, Ashton returned to Bath as head coach, but in 2006 he left this role, and was appointed as England attack coach to assist head coach Andy Robinson, alongside forwards' coach John Wells and defence coach Mike Ford.

On 20 December 2006 Ashton was appointed England head coach, following the departure of Andy Robinson. He chose Phil Vickery as his captain. Ashton won his first two games in charge of the England team, firstly the Calcutta Cup tie against Scotland and secondly beating Italy at Twickenham, but led the English team to a crushing defeat against the Irish National Team on his third outing. The 43–13 defeat by Ireland was England's worst ever defeat by Ireland in the 132 years of competition between the two sides.

The 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign started badly: the team narrowly beat the amateurs of the United States, and went on to lose 36–0 to South Africa; however, having finished their group as runners up, they went on to record a shock victory over Australia, won a very tight semi-final against France 14–9, and lost a closely-fought final to South Africa in the final 15–6.

Ashton has previously said, "My main strength is as a coach. I see my job as improving players individually, to do the technical work with them, and also to establish the environment, the framework, in which the players operate." Ashton's philosophy is that the backs comprise three creative forces (the scrum-half, the fly-half and the inside-centre) and four penetrative finishers (the outside- centre, the two wings and the full-back).

• England profile
• scrum.com statistics
• Ashton announces resignation from Ireland team