Two red cards in two test matches make Charlie Ewels look like someone from a list of young offenders, but the reality is far from it.
When England’s in-house lawyer called him aside in the changing rooms at Tokyo’s National Stadium, he knew his tour was not going to end well. The 6ft 6in player had just become the first player to be sent off twice in as many Tests and, on second viewing, his reckless disposal of Michael Leitch didn’t look good.
“I saw him in the locker room with the KC, Richard Smith, and I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a red card,'” Ewels recalls. “I’ve never stepped on a rugby field with the intention of hurting anyone, but I was wrong. For about five seconds, guys show they care about you, then rugby is very good at filling the void with humour. Aled Walters just He put his arm around me and whispered in my ear: Imagine if you got a third!
Ewels is not the menacing presence you would expect from someone with two red cards in two tests. Fun and engaging (more lineout technician than grumpy enforcer), he is quickly ordered to cover up his novelty ‘Hawk Tuah’ shirt as he talks all things club and country at Bath’s majestic training base.
He remembers the lonely 14-hour flight home after the summer tour of England. A moment of laughter or tears. Downgraded from the usual business class luxuries of an England rugby player, he was assigned a seat with a broken television as his teammates traveled to New Zealand.
England and Bath star Charlie Ewels sat down with Mail Sport for an exclusive interview
Ewels has earned 30 caps for England but has been sent off in his last two Test matches.
‘To be honest, I was hoping to be there with the luggage!’ says Ewels, who now has 30 caps. ‘I couldn’t watch a movie because my screen wasn’t working, so I just read my book. Ryan Halliday, Stillness is the key.
‘There was a feeling of ‘Ah, not again’, but that’s sport. I spoke to the boys the night before the game and told them this means more than my first cap because I almost had to work harder for it. Then it ends. Such is life. I’m not proud of it, but you quickly realize that it’s ancient history and the only thing you can change is what you do in the future.’
Back in Bath, there are plenty of things to keep you busy. He arrived home the day before his 29th birthday and booked tickets to watch the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It was primarily an off-season social gathering, but also served as an opportunity to learn from the pit lane masters.
‘Finn Russell, Mr Worldwide, sorted us out with some pit passes. As we walked through the pits, a lady who used to work in Bath’s marketing team, Kat Farmer, who now works for Red Bull, shouted: “Ewelsy, Ewelsy, come on!” It was the end of the practice day, when the cars don’t look like cars, just floating engines being modified.
‘It wasn’t the one percent they were looking at. It was 0.001 by centers. Three or four hours after the race, all the garages were still at full capacity; What can we take from the data to modify it and improve it a little tomorrow? The driver was gone, surrounded by fans screaming for autographs, but these guys were there in the dark with the keys at 10 at night and no one even knows their name. We have the medical team, the S&C team… it’s a lot more than just Finn Russell. Those are the parallels.’
Bath have survived a turbulent few years, flirting with relegation. Now, thanks to Russell and co, they are favorites to win their first Premiership title since 1996. As someone who first joined the club in 2012, what does Ewels see as the key changes?
‘Johann van Graan is the man at the top. It took a lot of small changes to change the direction of the ship. We now have an auditorium for meetings, whereas before we had a physiotherapy room and a meeting room. They have put a sauna in the locker room; a small one percent like the F1 analogy.
‘They knocked down a wall in the Rec locker room to open the space in the middle and be able to have two televisions; one looking back and one looking forward.
‘We have a nutritionist, so each day the food is adapted to that day; Breakfast may contain more carbohydrates because we have a big session in the afternoon.
‘We do yoga a couple of times a week so the boys better understand their bodies and what is tense. We have a place in the city called YogaKave where they adapt a session for rugby players. It’s about back and hips, not sitting on your stomach for 20 minutes because all our shoulders are destroyed.
“It’s very easy to say, ‘It’s Finn, everything is Finn, all we had to do was sign Finn,’ but Johann has recruited very well across the board. The squad is tremendously competitive and that drives training. I firmly believe that it all comes back to training and when you add up all those little things it leads to a higher performance environment.”
Last week, Chelsea’s new academy director, Glenn van der Kraan, a former Manchester City player, was welcomed to the club’s training base. It is a school of constant improvement, taking advantage of the sharpest minds in rival sports.
“Mikel Arteta once came to an England camp and said: ‘I love how much you touch each other, I love this.’ When we do something well in rugby, we hug each other or pat each other on the back. In football, there are fewer players on a larger field and the ball in play is so high that they never touch each other is when they score or concede a goal.
“Now you see Arsenal players celebrating and hugging each other when they make a tackle. Last week, Glenn said the most powerful time to do that is in training. He watched our sessions and said the difference between a Champions League player and a League Two player is that obsession with detail. Can you obsess over how you play that one-metre pass? Things like that contribute to the bigger picture.
The 29-year-old also revealed what Mikel Arteta learned during a visit to the England rugby camp.
Ewels hopes to lead Bath to their first Premiership title since 1996 next season.
Bath came up agonizingly short in last season’s Premiership final, losing by a healthy four-point margin to Northampton but, as with his red card in Japan, Ewels quickly turned the page.
“After the final, Johann booked a hotel in Windsor where we had a club function. Johann is a very religious guy and doesn’t drink much and the place we went to was a royal chapel that was converted into a nightclub. He had a few beers and then said: “It’s that way towards the nightclub, which is a proper chapel, which I have a problem with!”
“You want to decompress, pee and be normal for a while, but the England boys were in camp at 10am on Monday morning. The next thing is coming at you very quickly. In a week’s time it will be ancient history and you will be as follows.
“I’d like to think we made City and the fans proud of us again. Last year was good, there were some good memories, but we come back and now everyone is starting from scratch.”
