The Austin Healey comment Bath's Charlie Ewels will 'never forget'

Courage is a prominent word on the walls of Bath’s Farleigh House’s performance area, as a reminder of what it takes to go through nine gruelling months of rugby and emerge as champions of England. It is also a reminder of the days when Bath used to back up success year after year, as Courage is the name of the beer company that sponsored the league when they were the dominant club in the 1980s and 90s.

A golden 12-year period delivered 10 Cups and six league titles, a dynasty of success unrivalled in terms of silverware over such an extended time. Leicester’s four-timer in the league and back-to-back Heineken Cups in the early days of professionalism, followed by Wasps’ achievements as Kings of Europe and England, were other examples of all-conquering eras, while the Saracens class of 2014-19 were the last to reign supreme over any length of time.

Six different winners in the last six seasons of the PREM is an indicator of how challenging it is nowadays to retain the trophy, let alone create a new dynasty of success, a trend that Bath will hope to break this season, albeit with newly designed silverware at stake.

Bath are entitled to play with the swagger of champions, but Charlie Ewels, who has been in the first team for more than a decade, insists there will be no danger of any complacency when they start their title defence at Harlequins tonight.

“We’ve got a good group of lads, so you don’t see that. No one has swaggered in and thought they are complete at rugby. There is more confidence in the group, as we know we can achieve through hard work, but we also understand that we don’t have a God-given right to win rugby games,” said Ewels.

“In training, we’re talking about staying in the last second, the last play, until it is done, done, not nearly done. Those things decide games, which decide log points, which decide Premiership titles.”

Head-to-Head

Last 5 Meetings

Wins

1

Draws

0

Wins

4

Average Points scored

28

36

First try wins

60%

Home team wins

60%

With Bath being his only professional club, going into a new season as a Premiership champion is an unfamiliar feeling for Ewels given that last year’s league title win was the club’s first for 28 years.

“All I know is the one time I have felt anything similar was the final in 2014/15, when we finished top of the log and lost to a very good Sarries team in the final,” said the England lock.

“I’ll never forget standing on the side of the pitch next to Austin Healey doing a live (TV) plug (the following season), with us training in the background, saying these are my favourites to win the Premiership this year, and we finished ninth.

“So, it is one of those – week by week, the log says everyone is on zero; everyone thinks they have had a good pre-season; everyone feels in a good place. The only game that matters for us is Friday night.”

Ewels, who enjoyed a successful summer tour of Argentina and the USA with England, insists the slate is wiped clean, even though barely 100 days have passed since Bath lifted the trophy aloft at Twickenham following a nerve-racking win over Leicester in the PREM final.

“Even though there are lots of us still here, that was a different playing group; there are players that have moved on, there are players that have come in, other things have changed. Yes, we want to relive those moments again, but that was the 2024/25 group; this is the 2025/26 group, and we start at zero.

“It’s probably quite a unique thing about our league – that there are 10 teams who all beat each other regularly, home and away.

“I spent some time in Ireland in the summer, in Dublin, and they’re obsessed with the European competitions, and they can’t understand it when I say how precious, how important, and how difficult the PREM is to win. Everyone has tried to back it up, but for six times in a row, people haven’t been able to do it.”

Meanwhile, Johann van Graan, the mastermind behind Bath’s title triumph in 2024/2025, takes inspiration from across the challenge and the three-peat achieved by all-conquering Toulouse.

“You have got to have courage to go and do this again. I would say anything is possible in sport,” Bath’s Head of Rugby said.

“If you look at what is in my view the best club team on the planet, Toulouse, they have won the Top 14 three times in a row. And they are certainly a team, looking from the outside, that keep getting better, so that’s a team that is doing it.”