Charlie Ewels: England will never have Ireland’s level of cohesion

Charlie Ewels believes England will never have the levels of cohesion Ireland have ahead of Saturday’s Six Nations tie.

England head coach Eddie Jones described Ireland as the ‘most cohesive team in the world’ on Monday and Ewels says the Leinster dominated Irish side can’t compete in that regard.

He said: “They’re obviously blessed that such a large percentage of their players play for the same club, so they spend the whole year together. That’s something that we can never compete with, we’ll never have that. I think what we can aspire to do when we come into camp is ensure the speed that we get that feeling of being a team back.”

Undoubtedly the cohesion in Ireland’s camp will be well established, with 16 players from Leinster being included in Andy Farrell‘s Six Nations squad this year. While this differs in the England squad due to players coming from multitude of different clubs, Ewels insists that they do what they can to establish cohesion in the group in the time that they have together.

He commented: “Some of these things do just take time, and the longer the squad spends together the more you build those things. There are some people in this squad who are relatively new, so the more time we spend together will help to build on that.”

Looking ahead to the World Cup next year, the time that England will spend together in preparation and competition phases will be key in developing connections as a team.

Ewels reminisced about the last World Cup in 2019 and the levels of cohesion within the squad.

He mentioned: “Probably the moment I felt the team was its most cohesive was during the World Cup period in 2019 because we spent 14 weeks together. With that time together you get to learn each other more and more.”

Written by Imogen Ainsworth