Charlie Ewels
CHARLIE EWELS might not make many highlights r eels but he is t r easured by Bat h and England alike
CHARLIE EWELS is in relaxed mood. It’s two days after a telling win at Harlequins, two days out from the next skirmish against Worcester. Bath’s captain is being rested for that one, a well-earned breather during a punishing schedule. He is amused by the turn of events against Quins, when the sin-binning of hookers Jack Walker and Tom Dunn forced Bath to finish the match with 12 men and pack down for an uncontested scrum with Rhys Priestland and Will Chudley in the back row.
“And there was me thinking the week before that we played the weirdest game ever against Wasps, when they had everyone throwing in,” he says.
“Five days later we’re doing the same thing! I’m getting good at uncontested scrums. I’ve got Rhys on my left, who hasn’t got a clue what’s going on. We probably dropped off in intensity a bit, and the decisions and the penalties started racking up against us.
“It’s another challenge for us, we’ve spoken about that. How did we adapt, what decisions did we make? If we end up in that situation again, four points in the game and it’s a game-defining moment, what would we do differently? As it was we had the luxury of
being a couple of scores up, but it’s another good experience to learn from.”
Bath’s form has had tongues wagging since the resumption of the Gallagher Premiership in mid-August. The lineout, under the coaching of Luke Charteris and run by Ewels for every minute he’s on the pitch, is one of the best in the league. So too the Neal Hatley-moulded scrum, in which they’ve engineered some 50 straight-arm penalties.
Their 98% ruck efficiency is top of the pile and they’ve developed a red-zone ruthlessness more readily associated with table-topping Exeter. They are comfortable going through the phases, spells that frequently culminate in an 18st forward driving over for a five-pointer with multiple latchers in tow. At Quins, Elliott Stooke had Taulupe Faletau, Beno Obano and Semesa Rokoduguni lending their weight as he crashed over the line.
In short, Bath’s swagger is back and it’s prompted chatter among the Rec faithful that the long wait for a major trophy – the 2008 European Challenge Cup was their last – may be near an end.
“All the lads worked extremely hard over lockdown. We had amazing support from the S&C staff and every single player physically improved,” says Ewels, explaining the reasons behind Bath’s upturn. “And the coaches have been brilliant; they went away and thought of new ideas, refined our game model.
“Covid made everyone look differently at the world, there was a realignment of focus in terms of what it is we’re here to do. When something you used to think was a given, playing rugby at weekends and seeing your mates at training every day, when that gets taken away from you it’s more special when you get it back. We don’t take it for granted any more.”
He accepts there is a little more of the ‘Exeter’ style about Bath these days but says they’ve cherry-picked from top sides around the globe, from Super Rugby’s Crusaders to the big French outfits. Set-piece dominance is the foundation but there is nothing new in that.
“Every single team that’s up there wins games off the back of solid set-piece.
It’s something we put a focus on. But we’ve said we don’t just want to be a set-piece team because what happens when you meet a team that matches you there? If you’ve got no plan B you can’t be a top, top side. We want to be a team that is adaptable and has a number of ways of scoring. We can’t just be a team that drives or picks and goes.”
Ewels is at the heart of the project. At 25, he is already England’s present but more so England’s future.
DORSET ROOTS
Ewels’s rugby journey began as a seven-year-old at Bournemouth RFC after a haunting experience in the round-ball code; put in goal, he had to pick the ball out of his net 16 times and decided to give football a miss. Instead, he played rugby and basketball, giving up the latter when he went to boarding school at Bryanston. For years he was a No 8, experience that gave him more space and developed his handling skills.
David Dunn was Bournemouth’s director of rugby when Ewels was there in the Noughties and says his talent was evident from a very young age.
“He had all the attributes of a first-class player. It was obvious he was on an accelerated pathway and was always going to make it,” says the former England Schools coach. “For me it wasn’t his size or handling or contact skills that stood out, it was his vision, his ability to read the game. That is something you can’t coach really, it’s there innately. And he had bags full of it. He knew where to be at the right time.
“He was very focused from an early age, a very mature young man. The man he’s grown into really. He didn’t get things out of proportion, he was modest and humble. He got it absolutely right. He had a lot of support from his family, all the building blocks were in place.” Ewels’s mum Amanda worked from home when he was growing up, selling beauty treatments. Dad Phil is a retired policeman while his sister, Sarah, is a nurse in the Royal Navy.
Ewels was eight when England won the World Cup and he began dreaming of emulating Martin Johnson. Danny Grewcock was another hero of his, and later, as Bath’s academy director, signed him to the club. “Danny was brilliant in terms of teaching me as an 18-, 19-year-old about the intricacies of how to be a pro, how to compete.
“Before then, probably from the age of 15, it was Peter Walton, the England U18 coach; he was great in terms of teaching me the basics, how to find a point of difference. I still talk to Walts now. I also owe a lot to Toby Booth, who was Bath’s forwards coach as I came through.”
The respect is mutual, Booth telling us that Ewels is “one of rugby’s good guys. He wants to be a student of the game first and foremost. He gets lots of stick, whether it’s for wearing Crocs or having an electric car, because he’s a student of the game and cares deeply about it”.
Leadership comes naturally to Ewels and he captained England through the age groups. He won an U20 World Cup alongside Maro Itoje and a year later led England to another final. In 2014 he made his Bath debut as a teenager against Glasgow and the next week started at eight against a Toulouse back row of Thierry Dusautoir, Imanol Harinordoquy and Louis Picamoles.
If it all seemed too good to be true, Ewels was heading for a fall.
“I played pretty well against Toulouse and suddenly I thought that was it,” says Ewels. “The next week I played LV= Cup, captaining the side, and the week after that we went to Harlequins and I played the worst game of my career. I was
“What stood out was his vision, his ability to read the game. That is something you can’t coach”
missing tackles, carrying poorly. You can get humbled pretty quickly in this game, like being smoked in a tackle. And I just wasn’t on it. My prep in the week hadn’t been good enough, I just thought all I’ve got to do is show up and it will happen. I was wearing orange boots!
“The plan was for me to play 80 minutes and they hauled me off after
45. At the time I hated it, it was horrible because I had to look at myself and ask some hard questions. But it was exactly what I needed at the time. It’s one of the best things that’s happened to me.
“Since then I’ve had other selection disappointments, particularly with England, but all of that feeds in to the player and the person you want to be.
“You can always perform better but equally there’s always stuff that you do well, else you wouldn’t be there in the first place. It’s just reminding yourself of that and finding that balance. And then you can become more consistent with your improvement; you never have (the cycle of) a bad game and therefore you work really hard and then have a good game and then ease off.
“The top, top players just don’t make mistakes. They’re not always Man of the
Match but week in, week out they perform. They’re constantly working on areas of their game and pushing on and adapting. That’s the player that I want to be.”
GRUNT WORK
Two years after that chastening day in garish boots, Ewels made his Test debut against Fiji at Twickenham. He has won 13 of his 15 Tests and emerged as the sort of hybrid player that could come into its own should World Rugby decide, as has been speculated, to reduce the number of replacements.
Having started at lock against France in this year’s Six Nations, he was left out for the Scotland game and used off the bench against Ireland and Wales. Technically he played six, filling that slot in the lineout and for attacking scrums, but he was also deployed at eight.
“The days of the traditional back row are gone. You just want the best people in the best roles. When I came on, from an attack point of view there were guys better than me going from the base, which is why I scrummaged from the flank. And defensively, being heavier than the other back-rows, it made more sense for me to scrummage at eight, to put my weight through and cover inside those guys from a tackle point of view.”
In his autobiography, Dylan Hartley refers to himself as a “grafter”, the sort of player whose numbers are good but who doesn’t do the shiny things that make a highlights reel. Some see Ewels in a similar light, his best work in open play more likely to comprise a powerful
“The plan was for me to play 80 minutes and they hauled me off after 45. It was what I needed”
clear-out, a one-out carry or even a burst of pace to stop an opponent taking a quick throw.
“We all want to be on the highlights reel, doing all the fancy stuff,” admits Ewels. “The best players in the world do both, whether it’s the breakdown, finishing a three-on-two or a flying offload. Second-row lends itself to doing more of the grunt work, that hybrid link between the front and back row.
“You have the set-piece element but you’re wider in phase play than the front-row boys. The tackles you make are slightly different to those guys and
you end up doing a bit of both. That’s how I try to approach the game. I don’t go looking to do anything, I just do my job. If that means I’m carrying, cleaning, tackling, whatever it is, I just try to do the best I can at that moment.”
I mention how Dave Flatman, on commentary, bigged him up for a tackle on Will Evans that led to Quins kicking away possession and a positive outcome for Bath. “Cheers to Flats for that I guess. But ultimate respect is that of your team-mates. They know what it is that we’re trying to do. There’s stuff in games that isn’t glamorous but makes a huge impact. What gives me a real buzz is seeing, say, Beno Obano make a big tackle and get speed off the floor and back in the defensive line; it might not look pretty but actually we’re then able to get one person wider in defence.
“That little action might lead to JJ (Jonathan Joseph) getting an intercept and scoring under the sticks. So the whole game is connected. There are opportunities for effort moments all over the pitch. You just want to win as many of them as you can.”
We speak at length about the new tackle/breakdown directives, which Ewels sees as a positive for the game once they bed in and are consistently applied. Jacklers are having a field day as referees are quick to reward them if they get on the ball and show any intent to lift. “Attacking cleaners have got to be quicker in,” Ewels insists.
“Carriers must be better in terms of how they land on the floor, and don’t give the Sam Underhills and those guys a shot at the ball. It’s going to take time adapting but I think the game will look cleaner as and when teams come through that.”
NATIONAL SERVICE
His England career has yielded just six starts in nearly four years, Ewels competing in that time with arguably the strongest second-row pool that England have ever had. Itoje, George Kruis and Courtney Lawes all went on the last Lions tour and there was an outcry that Joe Launchbury didn’t join them. It would be understandable if Ewels felt fate has conspired against him but he has a different take.
“I wouldn’t be the player I am if it wasn’t for that competition. You’re a consequence of your environment. I’ve been fortunate to be involved in one of the top performing environments in the world with the best players in my position. I get to train with those guys, compete against those guys. There are two trains of thought: you can either wish you were born in another era or see it as an opportunity to grow and compete with these guys. I’ve learnt a huge amount off all of them.”
Ewels relishes each and every opportunity with England, with a Six Nations trip to Rome and then Autumn Nations Cup games with Georgia,
Ireland and Wales next on his radar. He has regular contact with England HQ, mainly with forwards coach Matt Proudfoot and the S&C guys.
He says of Eddie Jones: “He is very to the point. He’s seen it so many times, coached the best players in the world, how they train, what they do, he’s been to World Cup finals, won a World Cup. Because of all that experience he doesn’t need to waste time with the fluffy stuff. He can just tell you how it is and then you as a player can take it on board and go away and improve.”
The chat that started with a chuckle finishes with a laugh. I ask if any bit of the last line of his Wikipedia profile has a shred of truth in it. He hasn’t read it so I fill him in: Ewelsisakeencar collector and takes his Mustang to motorshowsacrosstheSouth-West, whereheregularlyposesforphotos withfansonthebonnet.
“That’s my mate from home who does that! Classic cars don’t do it for me but I’ve got an interest in electric cars. I definitely don’t own a Mustang. If I did I wouldn’t be posing on the bonnet!”
Knowing the type of person that Ewels is, you suspect nothing would be further from his mind.