Heartbreak of All Blacks defeat drives Ireland on, says Tommy Bowe

Tommy Bowe believes Ireland’s heartbreaking defeat to New Zealand has inadvertently brought the feelgood factor into Irish rugby.

With Ireland on a nine-match winning streak, Bowe can trace the current resilience of the Irish side back to the painful experience at the end of Joe Schmidt’s third game in charge against New Zealand in November 2013.

“At the weekend, when France pulled it back and it could have been just that one score, they had us on the ropes. But we go back a lot to think about that All Blacks game. It plays still on my mind,” said Bowe.

“Could you have worked that bit harder in the last few minutes of the game to do whatever you could to stop them scoring that try? That rings out in your head going into that sort of situation. Having the ability to know in the last five, 10, 15 minutes that we can pull something out of the bag if we need to win is a huge confidence booster for a team. I think that’s shown with us being able to get the nine wins in a row.”

In his 10 years in an international shirt, Bowe can hardly have experienced the level of expectation currently swirling around the Ireland side. In the early part of his career, beating England was the norm. So was losing to France.

So he is amused a win over Les Bleus can now be followed by grumbles about the lack of tries, particularly when he has the reference point of the scarring experience in Paris in 2006 when Ireland found themselves 43-3 behind early in the second half, before rallying to put some respectability on the scoreline.

“You have to laugh,” he says. “I’ve been part of games where we’ve been on the wrong side of losses to France and bad times. It just shows where Irish rugby is and the expectation that’s out there. To have beaten two of the southern hemisphere giants in the autumn, people want to see more and are expecting more of this Irish team.

“I think that’s a very positive thing for Irish rugby. We’re a confident team, very ambitious. The first two games might not have been the prettiest but I think we’re five points behind England on the points differential and I think we’re in a good place.”

His debut in November 2004 came after the start of a four-match winning sequence against England that ended in 2008. Under Stuart Lancaster, however, last year’s Six Nations runners-up have re-exerted supremacy and come to Dublin next week having won the last four contests between the sides stretching back to 2011.

Bowe’s role in a more structured side has changed under Schmidt but he says he has no problem with the less glamorous work.

“To be part of a winning team, you’d be happy to do whatever. The beauty of the game plan is that it’s all very simple, it’s just about small tweaks here and there so there’s not wholesale changes. When you do have that extra week, it gives us a bit more opportunity to look at England and review ourselves.”

The Ulster winger will turn 31 on Sunday and finds himself playing outside a new centre pairing of Robbie Henshaw and Jared Payne after more than a decade of the almost unbroken partnership of Gordon D’Arcy and Brian O’Driscoll.

It’s a reminder of how quickly things can change and the need to remain focused.

“In the past Joe has shown loyalty to players but is very quick to make a change and very quick to tell players that they have to be on their toes.

“Gordon has 80, 90 caps for Ireland, one of the stand-out performers of the last 10 years and he was playing for the Wolfhounds a couple of weeks ago. It just shows that there are always young guys coming through, people wanting to take your place. It’s a cutthroat sport. Players all think we’re the best, we all think we should be in that position and it’s about doing whatever you can to impress the coach to try and get yourself into that team. We have a super squad. In the back three the amount of players that are pushing for places there certainly keeps everybody on their toes.”