JOHNNY WATTERSONtalks to Ireland wing Tommy Bowe, who is back in the team following his knee injury

“I WAS devastated,” says Tommy Bowe. His faux disappointment is well received. Bowe’s first game back for Ospreys following a knee injury and his team-mate on the other wing, Nikki Walker, scores three tries. That’s not exactly how you would like the script to run given he plays for Scotland too.

Looking bad or what?

“He got the run on the left wing, got three bloody tries. But I did all the work for him. He reaped the rewards for me making the space for him,” says the Irish winger trusting that his tongue in cheek bravado is fully understood.

A pleasantly, talkative Bowe. A good vibe player to be around and smiling that Declan Kidney has pulled him straight to his bosom after a few weeks on the sideline.

That Fergus McFadden, who deputised with much success, is nowhere to be seen could be viewed as hard on the young Leinster player, who doesn’t even appear on the bench as wing or centre cover. But Bowe’s joy is infectious and rightly back in a position where he has excelled.

A bruised bone in his knee cap that required rest and not the knife also had its up side.

“It’s only been a few weeks, to be honest, I haven’t been too upset about it,” he says unguardedly. “If anything, it has given me a bit of freshness back. I’ve played a lot of rugby over the last year, couple of years, so it was nice to get a couple of weeks off to freshen the legs and freshen the mind a bit. It was kind of nice, a bit frustrating, but in the long run probably good for me.”

That that’s the way to face down injury crosses your mind. But, behind Bowe’s endearingly compliant manner, the vying edge has been fired by the immediate recall. He is brightened by the haste at which Kidney has come back to him.

“I thought Fergus played very well. But, yeah, It was a huge vote of confidence for me to come straight back into the team,” he says. Kidney was in no two minds why Bowe made such a seamless return.

“He (Bowe) went through the full 80 minutes. There was no restriction on his training. He brings his own wealth of experience into the side,” explained the Irish coach. “That would be the big thing. I wouldn’t fault Fergus when he came on to the wing when centre is his position.”

Bowe – who was 27-years-old on Tuesday – has inflated his contributions to the team and, while his straight running, physical presence and aerial abilities make him a multi-sided threat, his vocal input has also increased. Pulling players into position and taking responsibility for communicating has also been added and was a talking point yesterday. Players will only listen if they believe he has a streetwise credibility. And they do.

It is an aspect of McFadden’s game that he will develop in time.

“In sessions, it’s all about communication from the outside in, in both attack and defence,” explains Bowe. “So you need to be vocal out there because it’s very difficult for guys who are getting the ball in hand early to spot where space is or to spot where a lot of the attackers are.

“They kind of have the blinkers on. So it’s very important for the outside guys to communicate in. If you have a few clear voices, it makes things very easy.”

Ireland will play what they call their own game, but without the errors. The team has found a path that with improvement and consistency could be highly effective and they wish to stay on it. That will be as much the challenge of the often immaculate Ronan O’Gara as of the whole team. Bowe can expect a few high kicks and a different influence to that of Jonathan Sexton.

But today it’s all good.

And he knows exactly what he’s facing in Murrayfield.

“Obviously with Lamont and that, they’ve a couple of very strong runners there. Max Evans is good ball in hand,” he says.

“They’ll be playing at home and obviously hurting from the first 20 minutes against Wales, when they took it to them. They’ll want to start from the blocks. They like to get stuck in. They’ve a great back-row as we know and we need to be careful of their off-loading game if they get their tails up.”

It’s far from the frostbite days of the perished winger blowing his hands and longing for just one pass.