Every team sport has them. Year after year they perform to a reliably high standard for their club but, for whatever reason, international recognition never materialises. Their peers know better: if you asked his fellow professionals to nominate the best uncapped player in England over the age of 25, an unassuming 30-year-old with a sweet tooth and a history of knee trouble would still top many lists.
At 6ft 4in (193cm) tall and weighing 19st 9lb (125kg), Dave Ewers should be impossible to miss. Scour every other newspaper in Britain and Ireland, though, and Exeter’s giant-sized trump card will barely rate a mention before this weekend’s colossal Champions Cup quarter-final against Leinster at Sandy Park. Rarely has the contrast between such a huge man and his almost invisible public profile been so enormous.
Maybe, like other unassuming man-mountains such as Andrew Sheridan or Simon Shaw, it is because his most telling contributions often go unseen. Everyone hails Sam Simmonds or Luke Cowan-Dickie at the forefront of Exeter’s ruthless driven mauls without always noticing the influential shire horse behind them, one hand tightly gripped under an armpit and the other bound on the ball-carrier’s shoulder. “Often he’s the guy scoring tries for everybody else by getting hold of them and carrying them across the try line,” says Rob Baxter, Exeter’s director of rugby. “If he manages to get himself into one of the key positions towards the front, it tends to be a good maul.”
Which prompts the question: given Exeter’s status as the most effective team in Europe at the brutal art of close-range try-scoring, have England been missing a seriously big trick? Yes, back-row selection is invariably competitive but plenty of other nations would have awarded Ewers 50 caps by now. The closest he came was a non-cap England v Barbarians fixture at Twickenham in 2014, when he scored a try, plus holding some tackle bags before a Six Nations game against Wales five years ago when he was still recuperating from one of the four significant knee injuries that have punctuated his career.
He has long since made peace with his lot – “The back-row talent in England is ridiculous, it’s just one of those things” – but perhaps the British & Irish Lions obstacle with whom the Springboks would least like to collide this summer would be the Zimbabwe-born Ewers, whose parents were forced to flee when Robert Mugabe’s land reforms prompted the family’s farms to be seized. Ewers was 13 when he relocated to his grandparents’ house in Ivybridge, near Plymouth, in 2004; rugby has offered some salvation but mentally adjusting to his new life took a long time.
Happily there is a freshly visible spring in Ewers’ marauding step, a direct consequence of Chiefs’ European and Premiership double last season, which made him as emotional as anyone. “I honestly couldn’t believe it. I’d played in three previous finals against Saracens when we’d lost. The year I didn’t play, when I was injured, was the year we beat Wasps in extra time. I was starting to think: ‘Maybe it’s me, maybe I should just sit these finals out.’ There’s no better way to lift that curse than to lift the Champions Cup. I just couldn’t hold my emotions in. It was such a huge relief.”
All the angst, all the bitter African separation, all gloriously erased. The only better feeling would be to do it again, preferably in front of Chiefs’ loyal supporters. “That’s another driving factor: to get ourselves into these massive games where hopefully we can have our fans back in the ground.” Leinster’s breakdown specialists will pose a stern challenge but Exeter would not swap Ewers’ power, Simmonds’ pace and Jacques Vermeulen’s sharp instincts for any other trio.
“Dave is a gain-line monster,” says Baxter. “He’s a heavyweight carrier and a defensive stopper: in every area of the game those players are invaluable. He’s also got a real in-depth knowledge of our five-metre attack game. Even our props love him scrummaging on them because he gives them flat-out energy and weight.”
Three tries in his past three games, including last week’s mauling of Lyon, have further endorsed Ewers’ value beyond his “assists” and legendary status as one of the founders of Exeter’s “Cookie club”, widely feted for their weekly cake baking sessions. “Big Dave” is also less prone to superstition than in the past; there was a period when he felt it was compulsory to sit in a pre-game ice bath before he was truly ready to rumble.
His primary motivation these days is something warmer: the genuine glow of fellowship he feels when he takes the field with longtime mates such as Jack Nowell, Henry Slade and Cowan-Dickie. “I come from a background back home in Africa where loyalty is a massively important thing. People often talk about it being an honour to put on the shirt but for me it truly is. I had those years when I was out injured and there were times, especially after my fourth knee injury, when I thought: ‘Will I be able to play again?’ Those times are not nice but they taught me a lot about myself and what I wanted. Above all it taught me never to take anything for granted, not least running out with these boys.”
Which is another reason why even serious opposition such as Leinster will have to do it tough to make this year’s semis. In the Chiefs’ dressing room there is also a renewed desire to defend their European title after a rash of unsettling positive Covid tests led to the cancellation of their pool game in Toulouse before Christmas. “Because of things outside our control there was a chance we were going to be out of Europe,” says Ewers. “I think that took the pressure out of our tyres a little bit and affected us more than we thought at the time.
“Fortunately we’ve managed to get back on track. The return of our international boys has given us another massive lift and we’re looking to make the most of having them back. We’re getting to crunch time, in Europe and the Prem, and everything is starting to count.” On shudderingly big days such as these, Exeter have just the man for the job.
