Bowe insists Ireland only down not out

Tommy Bowe has dismissed suggestions that the Irish team are becoming also-rans after their record-breaking defeat to New Zealand at the end of June sealed a 3-0 series loss.

The Monaghan man missed the tour through injury but when talking of performances, he was focusing on the near-miss in the second Test rather than the 60-0 thumping in Hamilton a week later.

“Of course I watched it,” he said, speaking at the launch of a series of new online undergraduate courses in Hibernia College. “It was very difficult, I thought at stages in the second Test they were going to do it. I didn’t know what way to think, I wanted to be in there. And to see them so close and then to see what a class side New Zealand showed they were, not to be playing their best rugby and to be down to 14 men, and still to be able to grind out a win.

“You could just see how deflated the lads were after that in the last Test and after 52 or 53 weeks of rugby, unfortunately it just fell apart and New Zealand were just a class act in that third Test.”

Bowe also batted away the notion that things had gone stale, insisting the side just need to find the right mixture of youth and experience to gain results and momentum.

“People look at the season and think it was a disaster but we lost the first Six Nations game to Wales and had that gone differently, who knows what we might have done. But come the New Zealand tour, they showed us exactly how far we have to go to get back up to that level again and, unfortunately, we looked a bit off it.

“But I definitely don’t think we’re in crisis. Three Tests in New Zealand is always going to be difficult with the depth they have and the timing of it. I think we’re far from a crisis, you just have to see how the provinces are doing, but from an Irish point of view we have to look to see how we take it up again.”

As for his injury, Bowe said he’s not far off a return to fitness after surgery to remove a haematoma that had pushed into his kidney.

“I’ve still got the scars as they went through my abdominal wall so it’s kind of sore but hopefully I’ll be doing most of the stuff with the team soon. It will be tough to emulate last year but that’s where Ulster want to be, Leinster are doing it at the minute, we want to close that gap.

“I want to come in and use my experience and be a fresh voice to help us, and also in the league too, we want to push on from where we were.”