Zest and energy. It’s what the crowd in the RDS will expect on Friday night from James Lowe. As Leinster face Gloucester in their second pool game in the Heineken Champions Cup, the New Zealand born winger is the perfect foil for a cold night at the end of a working week.
Lowe is part personality, part desire, part a physical capability and always bristling with ambition and appetite on the pitch.
A particular spirit and drive, Lowe has captured the Friday night zeitgeist whether he is tackling, cleaning out or putting his left boot to good use. Mostly, he elevates the noise levels when loitering in the middle of the park, waiting for a decent wave to surf into the opponents 22 and cause whatever havoc he can. He has been deft at that.
The standing affection and admiration comes from a player being who he is, playing the way he plays, looking the way he looks. When the bun comes undone and the long hair of the Maori launches into a ruck, Lowe can charge a game.
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There is no confection or hidden act at work. The most common phrase Leinster players and coaches use to describe the 30-year-old is that he “brings good energy to the group,” he “energises” the place.
But Lowe is much more than a performer and his effectiveness around the park has been an outstanding aspect of his game. Even the occasionally slack defensive work, which he acknowledged in the most self-effacing way when he arrived in Ireland, has much improved.
Lowe was also easily the highest try scorer in last year’s Heineken Champions Cup. His 10 tries were three tries more than his closest rival, back rows Sam Simmonds of Exeter Chiefs and Harlequins’ Alex Dombrandt. Another flanker, Leinster’s world Player of the Year Josh van der Flier, was in third place with six tries.
Lowe has also made a seamless transition from the long-term injured player to the in-form winger. His recent reappearance for Leinster has been instantly impactful, as if he had never been sidelined for the months since Ireland’s summer tour to New Zealand.
“It was tough,” he said this week. “Because it was my first training back on pitch and I tore my calf, so that was pretty frustrating, especially when those [autumn] internationals came about. Obviously, very, very frustrating to miss those as well.”
That frustration is likely purged now after two matches, and this week he again starts the game against Gloucester in the same back three as last week, with fullback Hugo Keenan and winger Jimmy O’Brien. No surprises there.
In Le Havre for Leinster’s first pool match in the Champions Cup against Racing 92, Lowe was instrumental in two of the Irish team’s tries. The first in the 33rd minute arrived after he came charging at an angle inside the French 22.
Scrumhalf Jamison Gibson-Park crisply picked and passed as Lowe, with strength and pace, burrowed deeper into French territory and drew three players to the initial takedown.
That was pivotal as it allowed Gibson-Park to fling out a long high pass to the right wing. There hooker Dan Sheehan was keeping the width and positioned nicely to snatch and score.
Lowe’s second mark on the game came just five minutes later from a Leinster lineout on the left side of the pitch. The ball secured by Jason Jenkins was directed infield, where Lowe again set up to take it on at pace and broke 30 metres with an angled run, reaching deep into the French 22.
As he burned his way down the pitch the diving Racing and Scotland outhalf Finn Russell, in the 13 channel, lay skinned on the ground, flapping at Lowe’s heels as he passed him by.
Although smothered by three covering defenders, Lowe raised his arms and shaped to dunk the ball inside. The former underage basketball player for New Zealand found Garry Ringrose on the trail line and popped the ball one-handed between two Racing players for Ringrose to gallop across the line.
There is a similarity to Connacht and Ireland’s Mack Hansen. Two players brought up on a different brand of rugby, constantly ripping upfield from central positions, keeping involvement and tempo high and reading play around the park. On the back of that is Lowe’s physical power and a craving to “play footy”.
This week he said he was coming up to his sixth Christmas without being able to share it with his parents and, as an overseas player, was satisfied in his role as “one of the outcasts”.
At this stage he is anything but. With Leo Cullen and Leinster, with Andy Farrell and Ireland, Lowe has got that one terribly wrong.
