INTERVIEW TOMMY BOWE: GERRY THORNLEYon the happy-go-lucky winger's extra delight in lining out for Ireland against Ospreys team-mates, including the great Shane Williams
AN EFFERVESCENT type of lad at he best of times – you could hardly imagine Tommy Bowe in a bad mood – there’s an extra spring in his step this week.
This is Ireland versus Wales but this is also personal. This is the Millennium Stadium, where he’ll be up against his Ospreys team-mates. Pride and bragging rights, as well as Six Nations points, are at stake.
It’s evident as he skips away from the media room at the Killiney Hotel this week and finds a quiet corner adjacent to the hotel swimming pool.
“It’s the one I look forward to. It’s the one I hope when Declan is naming the team that I’m going to be given the nod for. It’s very like whenever I’m playing with the Ospreys and I’m going to Thomond Park or we’re going to the RDS or up to Ravenhill, it gives me an extra sense of excitement and a bit of enthusiasm to want to get a win. It makes my life a lot easier whenever I can go back to Wales with a win under my belt.”
The insider knowledge works both ways, he says, and by now, such is the frequency of the clashes at club or Test level and the experience of working with Warren Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Rob Howley on the Lions tour, there’s little even Bowe can pass on to his Ireland team-mates.
Directly opposing him will be club-mate and living/playing Welsh legend Shane Williams, against whom Bowe will surely be employed for Ronan O’Gara crosskicks a la Ireland’s crucial try in the Slam coronation in Cardiff two years ago.
“The nice thing about moving to the Ospreys was that I didn’t have to come up against him quite as much,” Bowe quips. “For a tall winger like myself you’re more than happy having a Jonah Lomu-style guy because you know he’s just going to try and go straight. But with Shane you have to hunt him in numbers.
“He’s very difficult to tackle on a one-on-one situation. I think Ireland in the past have managed him very well. But his scoring record is absolutely phenomenal and the Welsh style of play suits him to a tee. He knows where he needs to be. He gets into the right positions and if he’s not the one making the break he always seems to be getting on the end of that pass.”
The warmth is palpable. Bowe talks of Williams’ popularity as the poster boy of Welsh rugby, especially amongst kids. “There’s kind of like a ‘Shane’s region’, almost, in the Ospreys region where he goes out and meets young kids. He’s a massive man in world rugby but in saying that he’s a very humble, a very quiet fella.”
He talks good-naturedly of Mike Phillips being “a feisty character”, of good mates such as Jonathan Thomas, Alun Wyn Jones, Lee Byrne and James Hook. The pre-match texting won’t be excessive, he maintains.
“It’ll only be a bit of craic, I’d say, maybe sending a little message out and see if I get a response, but it’ll be mainly just trying to see if they’ve got any spare tickets!”
That is no joke. He has an apartment on the marina in Swansea, which is five minutes from training, five minutes from the stadium and two minutes from the centre of town. Being so accessible from Ireland, friends come from Emyvale in Monaghan (where he grew up and his parents still live and run the family business, BD Foods); from Armagh, where he went to school, and from Belfast from his Ulster days, as well as friends and relatives from all over Ireland.
There could be anything from three to 25 for every two or three games, he reckons. “For the Toulon match, there a few weeks ago there were 27 people who came over. There was a busload of about 20 from Monaghan. There was another four, I don’t know, Galway, Leitrim, Dublin, and then another two school-mates from Monaghan.”
As they add to the Liberty’s sometimes desultory atmosphere, the Ospreys roll out the red carpet, or at any rate the free pints. Nor does Swansea exactly do quiet Saturday nights. “It used to be £12 all you can drink in one of the bars,” Bowe laughs. “I mean, you can’t go wrong with that, the boys are going home thinking they’re still in profit.”
And he puts them up in his apartment! “Yeah, well, I’ve a good big sofa!”
It’s a problem he’s glad for this week. A bit like Jamie Heaslip, Bowe would have been as almost indestructible until the Ospreys diagnosed a knee injury in the run up to the Six Nations which ruled him out of the Italy and French games – thereby ending a run of 26 Test starts, save for being rested against Fiji in the autumn of ’09.
It transpired to be no more than a bruised bone, which he could have played with, but it required rest to avoid an operation. It’s worth noting the Ospreys don’t flog him, resting him in and around the November Tests and the Six Nations, and in his first two seasons there he played 22 and 23 games for the region (all bar two in the starting line-ups). In Ireland’s Grand Slam winning 2008-09 season, he was also the only Ireland player, along with Donncha O’Callaghan, to play every minute of all nine Tests (scoring five tries). Bowe then started six games on the Lions tour (adding another four tries) to South Africa, and was one of only five players to play every minute of every Test; the first two on the right wing and the third at outside centre.
“Yeah, I want to play matches. I don’t play the sport to train. I mean, training is the boring office job part for me, the part I enjoy is getting out on to the pitch and playing matches. Obviously, I don’t have this welfare programme but it’s something the Ospreys have taught me about and in fairness to them they have been very good with me.”
The move to Ospreys has been wonderful for him and even before completing his initial two-year contract at the end of last season, he had signed up for another three seasons at the Liberty Stadium. The Ospreys, he says, do things differently in their defence and attack, but mostly the greater competition within has brought his game along, and playing and training alongside the likes of Williams.
He had already scooped the Ulster and Ireland Player of the Year awards the previous season, but his strike rate improved with the move and in his first season with the Ospreys, he helped Ireland win a Slam and became a Lions Test starter, and last season was overwhelmingly voted the Six Nations Player of the Championship.
Not bad for a player who, also like Heaslip, missed out on the 2007 World Cup.
Deceptively quick, with his long stride, he plays heads-up rugby, always looking to free his hands in the tackle for support runners or running superb trailers himself. He must look at Chris Ashton’s exploits with envy.
“I’ve been watching him and he runs those lines as well. It’s just a case of being in the right place at the right time. I think, to be honest, with England, it’s Ben Youngs, Toby Flood who have been on fire. That’s a winger’s dream, to have people making breaks like that. Unfortunately, I think against Scotland we did make breaks and I didn’t get on the shoulder. It’s something that I’ve looked at, that I want to improve.”
That Murrayfield game having followed his enforced and rare watching brief, he maintains Ireland are “in a good spot”, adding: “I feel confident with the way we are at the minute.
“I think we’re not just relying on kicking our points and putting ourselves in field position all the time. I think that we’re willing to take things through phases.”
While the failure to press home their advantage in all three games has, he admits, been frustrating, “I’m fairly upbeat with where we are at the minute. This weekend against the Welsh, though, we can’t be coughing up those sort of points against them because it’s going to be a different type of game this weekend.”
Encouragingly, he’s one from one on his playing visits to the Millennium, and was also a fan there at both of Munster’s Heineken Cup wins.
At 27, he should be reaching his peak years, and despite that Slam, with a first World Cup appearance in the offing, he’s far from sated.
“You know, I moved to the Ospreys because they’re an ambitious squad and I haven’t fulfilled all I want to do with them, certainly not. With Ireland also, I’m happy with the Grand Slam and stuff but I think that we’re in a golden era at the minute. I think that the squad at the minute is as exciting as I’ve seen it.”
“To see the disappointment in players who are playing out of their skin, like Fergus (McFadden), Andrew Trimble, Johnny Murphy, these guys are playing great rugby and aren’t getting a nod, that keeps the pressure on me to keep performing.
“Having picked the same team this week, it’s put the pressure on us to perform, but there’s a lot more I want to achieve. I could easily say I’ve achieved a fair bit but no, there’s a lot more to come.”
Tommy Bowe
Date of birth: February 22nd, 1984.
Place of birth: Emyvale, County Monaghan.
Height: 6ft 3in (1.91 m).
Weight: 15 st 7 lbs (98 kg).
School: Royal School, Armagh.
University: University of Ulster, Jordanstown.
Playing career: Queen's University, Belfast Harlequins, Ulster (Played 91, 34 tries), Ospreys (played 55, 30 tries), Ireland (played 37, 16 tries) and Lions (played 6 , including 3 Tests, 4 tries.
Honours: Grand Slam (2009), Lions tour (2009, played all three Tests), Ulster Player of the Year (2008), Irish Players' Player of the Year (2009), Six Nations Player of the Championship (2010).
