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.