Gloucester Rugby’s Charlie Atkinson talks about playing at Villa Park, emotion at Wasps and the sacrifices you have to make to go Pro.
Watch the full chat with Charlie Atkinson below:
Losing always hurts, but Gloucester fly-half Charlie Atkinson says the overall feeling from the first Slater Cup to be staged at Aston Villa Football Club’ was a positive one.
The Cherry and Whites went down 36-17 in the spring sunshine at Villa Park to Leicester, largely due to conceding four tries in the opening 15 minutes.
But in the bigger picture the day was a big success for The 4ED Foundation, set-up by Gloucester legend Ed Slater to support families affected by Motor Neurone Disease. Slater has been living with MND since 2022.
“We had a bit of a mountain to climb at half-time and got back into the game. But it was a great day for Ed and the charity and for promotion, but also raising funds.
“I know we’ve definitely got the game there next year and hopefully we can get a good crowd again and carry on that date in the calendar,” Atkinson told Sport and Life.
Twenty-four thousand fans were in attendance to see the Prem game play out and the game was televised on TNT with a large group ex players in attendance to support Slater – who captained both Gloucester and Leicester – and MND awareness.
The 4Ed Foundation has already helped people in Gloucestershire and across the UK who are living with MND – giving grants for vital equipment and home adaptation that make the rapidly progressive and debilitating disease that bit more manageable.
As a keen football player in his youth Atkinson also relished playing on the turf of a famous club – Villa have seven times been champions of England and won the European Cup in 1982.
“I loved it. You know, it was a really cool stadium. I’d gone along with a few of the boys for a bit of promotional stuff a few weeks before. So’d been in the changing rooms and walked around the pitch.
“So maybe I felt a bit more comfortable than some of the others. But, yeah, it was an unreal, unreal day out.”
Atkinson certainly isn’t using playing on a football pitch as an excuse for the loss. As the team’s playmaker he found he had plenty of space, although he was pleased the area behind the goals was extended to accommodate rugby.
“When we had gone down a few weeks before this, we had the football goals up, obviously. So, you know, were looking at it saying ‘this is quite a small dead-ball area.’
“But it didn’t feel any different to a normal rugby pitch. If anything it felt quite wide.”
If Atkinson has mixed feelings about the Slater Cup because of the results, he’s entitled to a similar take on the 25/26 season overall.
The team has had a deeply dispiriting campaign with wins few and far between. And yet it’s been a season that’s seen Atkinson progress throughout – firstly at fullback before establishing himself as the regular 10.
“For us as a club we’ve been nowhere near where we’d want to be. And, you know coaches, staff, everyone’s working really hard to get towards where we think we should be and we know we should be.
“But personally it’s probably the most consistent game time I’ve had since I was at Wasps when I was 20, 21. So in that sense it’s been good for me.
“I started the season at fullback, playing pretty regularly and thought I was going pretty well. To then get a run of games at 10, which is my favourite position and I feel like I can help the team best wearing that shirt.”
Atkinson is very self-deprecating about his physical attributes and says because of that full-back is just a better fit.
“I’m obviously not the quickest or the biggest. I’d say I’d prefer to be attacking at 10 where I’m closer to the line and there’s more late decisions by defenders. In some ways it can easier to beat the defender right at the line if we’ve got options to pass.”
The mention of Wasps above is significant. Because throughout this conversation with Atkinson and previous encounters I’ve sensed a gratitude. A gratitude for being a rugby player.
Possibly this is because he remembers when his pro career seemed to have been taken away from him when the historic Wasps went out of business in late 2022.
“I was balling my eyes out. Because I’d been involved with Wasps for so long, it was a tough message to receive when the administrators came in and told us were were all out of a job.
“Luckily I found my feet in pretty good time joining (Leicester) Tigers. But even now I chat with guys from Wasps. I was very unfortunate for us and the fans and the club as a whole. It was a tough time, but I’m happy I had some part of it.”
You wonder if part of Atkinson’s emotion when Wasps went to the wall was guilt. Guilt for choosing to pursue a career in rugby union over further education. This was owing to a keen sense of the sacrifices his parents made to pay for him to attend the prestigious and historic Abingdon School in Oxfordshire.
“Obviously Abingdon was a private school, so they paid a lot of money, sacrificed holidays for a good eight or nine years years.
“I didn’t quite get the idea that if you wanted to go for rugby you had to go all eggs in one basket. I remember Andrea Massi, our coach at Wasps and a mentor and he pulled me aside and told me ‘stop messing about and sign the contract.’”
Hindsight remains twenty-twenty for us all but it looks like Massi, a former Italy international gave solid advice.
And credit to Atkinson for finding a bit of a middle ground after all – he’s close to completing a degree in business management in his spare time and is a regular Prem starter. Let’s hope 26/27 sees his star continue to rise in conjunction with a revival for the team overall.
