Charlie Ewels survives amputation scare to put best foot forward

Even after 34 England caps and nearly 200 games for Bath, Charlie Ewels is one of those rugby players people probably don’t appreciate as much as they should until he’s stopped playing.

His own worst critic, Ewels doesn’t tend to put in the eye-catching, lung-bursting runs of his fellow England lock Ollie Chessum, and claims he never rates himself higher than a 7 out of 10.

However, the 30-year-old’s worth to the Bath pack is immeasurable, in the leadership he brings, his maul defence and lineout ability, and a work-rate that’s hard to beat; basically, the he’s sort of player any opposition team would love to have on their side.

Despite his stern-faced exterior, a career requirement if you’re a top-class lock, Ewels comes across well in the way that he speaks, freely and honestly, and it is hard to imagine him being anything other than his authentic self. But, physically, there was a fear that he could be a changed man forever.

The infection in his ankle, that ruled him out for seven weeks through December and January, got so bad that he feared he might have to have his foot amputated.

Instead of lining up opposite Maro Itoje in Saturday’s Investec Champions Cup Round of 16 tie at The Rec, Ewels would have had something much larger, and challenging to deal with.

Ewels still doesn’t exactly know how the infection came about, or why it took hold of his limb so badly.

“It was from a small cut on my left ankle, probably a stud, I don’t really know. And when we tested what the bacteria was that got in there, to check I was on the right antibiotics, but we never found a source,” he explained to RugbyPass.

“Now, we obviously run around outside. There’s fertilisers on the pitch, there’s mud, there’s, you know, all sorts, so where and what got in, we don’t know.

“But I was very, very well looked after both club-wise and I actually spent some time in an NHS hospital, and incredibly I’m grateful for the people that looked after me.

“It was very bad. It was, I spent the week in hospital on IV drip and had surgery at the end to cut out all the infections.

“It is humbling, one day I was fine, and then the next day I am lying there on a ward and not really 100 per cent knowing for about 12 hours if I was going to keep my foot or not.

“All I am left with a really small cut and a story.”

Fixture

Investec Champions Cup

Bath

07:00

4 Apr 26

Saracens

All Stats and Data

Ewels has had a stop-start season, having picked up a knock against Gloucester in round two of the PREM and missing a month, being away with England, and then suffering the potential life-changing infection.

“Do I feel fresh? I think there’s a sweet spot between if you gave a player six months off and said, don’t play rugby for six months’, I don’t think they would come back in and play their best rugby in the first two games. That’s why we have pre-season fixtures.

“So you need to play, you need that, you need that battle hardness. But, at the same time as well, the sweet spot is not overplaying and, in my time here in the last three-and-a-half years, one of the things that I’ve always felt as a player that’s been done really well, is we use our squad, and also we try and have everybody firing at all times, and there’s an understanding from all the players that you need to be ready to go at any time, and everybody needs to be ready to play, and you’ll get your minutes, but you’ll get your rest and you’ll be well looked after.”

Ewels jokes that he’s never hit the ‘sweet spot’ in his career, despite this being his 11th season a senior pro.

“I have no idea what the sweet spot feels like,” he said in jest.

“Sometimes, a year later, you look back and you go, ‘oh, I was playing quite good rugby there, I wonder why that was’, when you try and think about the circumstances.

“I don’t know whether all players are like this, but in my mind, I’m never playing more than a 6 or 7 out of 10 game, and I always think about the things you didn’t do, about the things you missed rather than things you did, but maybe that’s my mindset. We can get into this, this is therapy

“I’m trained to be an optimist, but my default would be to be a pessimist and I’d probably look for what can go wrong.

“Am I a consequence of my time in this environment? I came in as a youngster and it went very well. We got to Premiership final, we finished top of the log. I completely naively thought that’s just what it would be like. And then I learned the hard way across the next six, seven years, that winning and losing are actually incredibly close together. The gap really isn’t as big as you think it is. And so actually, if you start to let things go by one, two, five per cent, before you know it, you can enter that downward spiral that we all try to avoid.

“I’m incredibly protective now with the environment that’s been rebuilt and the successes of last year that, when you start to see those little bits of complacency, which are human nature, creep in here and there, then I probably think it’s worse than it is, because I’m protective of what’s been created, I know how hard it is.”

Head-to-Head

Last 5 Meetings

Wins

3

Draws

0

Wins

2

Average Points scored

41

21

First try wins

40%

Home team wins

60%

A treble winner last season, Ewels and his team-mates will be hoping to add the missing piece of silverware to the Bath trophy cabinet – the Champions Cup.

However, the mindset at Bath of, ‘never too high, never too low’ prevails. There is certainly no danger of Ewels getting ahead of himself.

“I think what start off as words on the wall, once you live experiences together as a group, I think then they all start to become your behaviours. So to the outside world, they might just be just be words, but to us, I would say they are definite consistent behaviours, and then they’re backed up by what Mondays look like, what Tuesdays look like from a training point of view.

“They’re backed up from coaching and leadership and senior players and holding each other accountable. It can’t just be one person. It has to be the group that believes that that’s the way to do things week in, week out.”

One in, all in. Ewels is just happy that he’s both a foot soldier and a leader.