Ewels working to be stronger, faster, fitter
BEEFED-UP Bath lock Charlie Ewels has been piling on the pounds in a bid to force his way back into World Cup contention with England.
Ewels, highly rated by Red Rose boss Eddie Jones, missed last month’s tour of South Africa after sustaining a late season ankle injury. However, the 23year-old has put his time to good use as he aims to add extra grunt to his highclass repertoire. Ewels told The Rugby
Paper: “I partially tore a few ligaments in my right ankle and was declared unfit before the tour squad was announced, so once you’re injured the biggest part is just accepting it and using it as an opportunity to put your body right.
“I’m in training again now and from a general body point of view I’ve taken the chance to get in the gym and become a little heavier than I was before. I played last year at about 116kgs (18st 3lbs) and I’m working at around 120kgs (18st 9lbs) now.
“With the way we want to play at Bath next season and the way England want to play, they want go-forward from the pack, and while there’s technique involved in ball-carrying and tackling, the more weight you have behind you the better it will be.
“It’s a simple matter of physics really – the old stronger, fitter and faster scenario – but you’re always trying to improve things and a little more weight should mean when it comes to collisions I can win a few more of them around the park.”
Ewels, who won the last of six England caps against Samoa last November, added: “I’m never going to try and guess what Eddie Jones is thinking around selection and you can waste a lot of energy worrying about it and getting bogged down.
“All you can do is affect it with your performances and that’s what I’m aiming to do. Mentally and physically I’m feeling pretty good at the moment and the way to impress is to fly through pre-season and then start playing my best rugby for Bath.”
While Ewels joins Courtney Lawes and George Kruis in trying to force their way back into the England reckoning after injury, also back in the mix is heavyweight enforcer Dave Attwood, below, who is now back in training with Bath after returning from Toulon.
“It’s great to see ‘French Dave’ back,” says Ewels. “It’s been really good mentally for him to have that break in France because he’d had a pretty full-on six years playing a lot of club and international rugby before having that long injury lay-off.
“It all probably caught up with him a bit, but he’s gone away and experienced something completely different to the Premiership and maybe fallen back in love with the game.
“Watching his performances for Toulon he was back to the Dave Attwood of old and I can’t wait to see him back playing for us and seeing what he can do.
“You need five or six good locks in a squad to get through the season and Dave brings something a bit different as well; he’s that traditional heavyweight, collision-winning lock and it will bring a nice balance back into our second row operation.” Bath’s summer recruitment has seen Jamie Roberts, Will Chudley, Jackson Willison and Joe Cokanasiga arrive at the Rec, while a tieup with the local university means academy numbers have risen – a massive plus according to Ewels. He added: “We’ll have a lot of injured guys back and our recruitment’s been pretty exciting as well. What’s really refreshing, though, is we’ve got loads of new academy boys in. It’s doubled in size and you can’t understate the value of that.
“Last year, with all the injuries we had and international being away, we didn’t have the squad to cope and training suffered. You couldn’t get 15 v 15 so there wasn’t as much of a push for selection, but now it will be more competitive.
“Hopefully that will continue throughout the year and with Girvan Dempsey joining an otherwise stable coaching staff, I’m very optimistic that we can have a much better season and really push ourselves to win some silverware.”