After twice being stung by clubs going bust in England, Charlie Moss moved to France to forge his career.
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IT’S one thing to see your club go into administration, it’s quite another to see your next one follow suit within a month to end up dropped in a sink of swim situation in a country where you don’t speak a word of the language. It’s fair to say Charlie Moss has done things the hard way to end up here in Verona.
“I was gutted because that’s your boyhood club,” he says, somewhat understandably of Wasps’ plunge into administration in 2022.
Then, no sooner was he picked up by London Irish in a rush job to get the deal over the line before he turned 18, than Moss and his agent were looking for pastures new yet again. This time, it led to an 800 mile trip to sunny Montpellier, one of France’s rugby hothouses, which was the perfect place to get the sour taste of English rugby turmoil out of his mouth.
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“I had a couple of options in England, but at that stage I kind of wanted to go,” Moss explains. “I thought, with all this happening, there’s got be a reason, so I may as well give it a shot in France.”
The didn’t appear out of thin air, however. After a strong showing for the Scotland U18s against France, local clubs began making enquiries. Spurning their advances in favour of Irish, he wasn’t going to say no a second time.
Moss is incredibly blasé, but surely relocating to a foreign country and having to figure everything out yourself whilst still in your teenage years must have been a struggle?
“When I first got there, it was very hard because everything’s in French. You go to the store and you’re reading the labels but you have no idea what anything’s saying,” he says. “You’re trying to sort your flat out and it’s lot harder than it once was.”
But as they say, pressure makes diamonds, and Moss is grateful for what it has taught him. “It was a very good experience,” he says. “It’s not only getting used to living by yourself, it’s that you’ve basically got to fight for yourself, because you’re on your own. You don’t really speak the language so you’ve got to learn fast. It’s a sink or swim environment.”
How is his French now?
“It’s getting there. I’m very confident speaking it, holding good conversations in it. I can read all the stuff in shops, restaurants and I understand what the coach is saying.”
Adapting the life off the pitch is one thing but doing so on it is another.
“The big thing I noticed was the difference in mannerisms because the French are actually quite laid back, a lot more laid back. It was a big culture shock when I first got there, but now I’m settled and you understand both sides of the coin.”
Since arriving in southern France on three-year contract in July 2023, Moss has been honing his craft with the club’s ‘Espoirs’ side, the equivalent of the ‘A’ teams at Glasgow and Edinburgh, albeit they play far more regularly against fellow development French sides.
“The way they run it out there is a really good system because it just provides constant game-time for the younger players,” says the back-five forward “A lot of boys over here [in the UK] have to go on loan because there aren’t a lot of opportunities to develop younger players at the club, so it’s a lot easier in France because you’re with the club all the time, you can train with the pros mid-week.”
That close proximity to the senior pros means Moss has been able to train alongside greats of the game such as Billy Vunipola, Paul Willemse and Sam Simmonds, who are just a few of the big names at his club.
And, it is Willemse, the 6ft 7ins French international, who has made the biggest impact on the the budding Scot.
“It’s been unreal, especially at the start of the season when I was coming back from an injury and Paul was also coming back, and he was really good with me because he’s been there, he’s done practically everything that there is to achieve,” says Moss. “Far from an elitist setting where the ‘top dogs’ as it were keep to themselves, the ‘prospects’ have been able to pick up little stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily pick-up from watching them on the TV.
“You see what they do in training, what their work-ons are, why they’re doing it and the foreign players especially have been really good with us young boys.
“Any questions you ask them, they’re always there for you.”
Such was his progress during his first year at Montpellier that Moss was called up to the senior side bench for a pre-season friendly against Toulouse at the start of the 2024-25 campaign.
“I was buzzing for it. You get there and the stadium’s packed, [with] 20,000 in there, and you’re looking around. It was so humid and I hadn’t acclimatised one bit.”
By the end of the warm-up, Moss says he was “absolutely finished”. However things picked up with his second wind. “Getting out there was one of the most challenging experiences, but it was unreal, It gave you that taste of pro-level rugby. It was one of those experiences I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
There’s a sneaking suspicion that Moss will have plenty more rugby memories to draw on later in life with a long career still ahead of him, starting with Scotland U20s, for whom the Essex-born forward qualifies courtesy of his Aberdeen-born and Glasgow-raised mother.
That connection facilitated his call-up through the Scottish Qualified (SQ) program whilst attending Shiplake College, where he became friends with a certain Reuben Logan.
“I get along with all of the squad very well, especially Reuben, and all the boys I’ve played with at U18s. I think the camp just brings everyone a bit closer together because obviously you’re living together, you’re seeing each other 24-7,” he smiles. “Whether you like it or not!”
Moss and his teammates will look for all the advantages they can get after a difficult defeat to England in the opening round of the tournament.
“It was gutting, especially because we made a big point amongst ourselves of showing the progress [made since the Six Nations and I think we did a really good job in the first 20 minutes,” he reflects. “We showed what we can really do when we play to our strengths. Obviously you can’t predict yellow cards and the affect heat would have on players.”
“Although the result didn’t go our way, it gives us a lot of confidence as a building block for the next couple of game because we know we have the performance in us. It’s just about keeping it going for the full 80 minutes.”
One big plus was the Scotland scrum which punched above its weight to give England a couple of sore ones at the weekend.
“There’s nothing better than when you’ve got a very dominant scrum – boys get very fired up – it’s a very close group, the forwards,” says Moss, “I’d say it’s unreal, especially in the front-row we’ve got.”
Now Scotland’s ‘Hateful Eight’ face a dangerous Australia, backed into a corner after a 73-17 humbling at the hands of South Africa, with the return of talisman Freddy Douglas from a concussion seeing Moss shift from starting at blindside flanker to being charged with making in impact off the bench.
Rugby Union is, of course, a fringe sport in large swathes of Australia, but not this summer, with the British & Irish Lions currently on tour there.
Does Moss harbour any Lions ambitions himself?
“100 percent,” he replies. “I think everyone who’s here will aspire to be a Lion, but the way I personally look at it is, you’ve got to have long-term and short-term goals. Obviously everyone wants to aim for the moon, but you’ve got to have a plan of action to take you those next couple of steps.”
One foot forward it is, and after the conclusion of this tournament with four games still to be played, Moss will join Pro D2 side Valence Romans Drôme Rugby in Romans-sur-Isère, about 220kms north-west of Montpellier, on loan. He is following a similar path to Scotland’s Alexander Masibaka, who pulled up trees these last two seasons while on loan with Soyaux-Angoulême from Montpellier.
“For me, personally, there are a lot of little things in the game that I know I need to work on, and it’s just about processing day-in and day-out, making sure that, even if you’re one percent better than the day before, you keep adding that up over time.”
“As a team, I think our goal is the same, just to keep progressing and putting our performances we feel proud of.”
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