Interview with Tommy Bowe: A year on from his first cap - against the USA - and the bigger pieces of his career jigsaw are beginning to fall into place. Three nights before Tommy Bowe steps out against the All Blacks, his coltish zest bespeaks an almost mad enthusiasm for battle. But he knows that, with the team currently in transition, a measured performance could make his elevation permanent. The 21-year-old's powerful frame has been a little lighter to carry round this week. For Ireland's toughest match of the season his face fits.
With Denis Hickie out of the frame and Shane Horgan's move to inside centre, his hopes may have been high. But Eddie O'Sullivan normally turns to those players who have served him well over time. Not this week and Bowe has profited.
With Denis Leamy coming in for Anthony Foley, Anthony Horgan on the other wing and Girvan Dempsey sacrificed, the young Ulsterman is not the only player O'Sullivan has surprised this week.
His run-outs for Ulster since the 2004 autumn internationals have given evidence of a greater maturity, without any blunting of his counterattacking, have-a-go instincts.
Last year IRFU statistician Des Daly was plagued with phone calls about the first Monaghan man to play rugby for Ireland. Daly took the wind from that story and reeled off a handful of characters. Armagh-born Bowe is not the first resident from Monaghan to wear green and he doesn't care a jot.
"Back then (2004) to be thinking that I could be starting against the All Blacks this time was something really exciting for me and something to really look forward to," he says. "The thought of winning your first cap was a very daunting experience.With your first cap you don't really know what to expect, what the level is going to be.
"Against the USA people probably thought it was going to be a pushover. But you don't know what level the All Blacks are going to be at. It's going to be a step up from anything I've ever played before and I'm really looking forward to that."
With Rico Gear's hat-trick against Wales illustrating the speed and verve at which the New Zealand team can move wide and counterattack, Bowe is not expecting to be slapping his thighs to keep the November weather off his bones in the shadow of the West Stand. It will be relentless and full on.
"For a game like this where they're at their strongest whenever they turn over the ball or whenever the opposite team makes a mistake, that's when they click into gear and score tries.
"If I do get to make a break, or if I do get to not throw away the ball . . . it's something I enjoy, putting a bit of skill into the offloads and that sort of thing. In a game like this I think it's time to take the careful approach but I wouldn't rule me out of the odd run. If I do and it doesn't work out, don't stab me in the back.
"But it's up to me to get involved in the match as much as I can. Obviously their wingers are huge players for them and their back three are massive players for them. Sure its going to be a big job for me to keep them under wraps.
"Hopefully I'm not just going out there to defend for the whole match. Hopefully I'll get the chance to get the ball in my own hands and obviously have a cut at them."
While Leamy at number eight also has just three senior caps, he is two years older than Bowe. On the left wing Anthony Horgan has just six caps, while openside flanker Johnny O'Connor has seven. The bench is even lighter in that regard. While Dempsey and David Humphreys have 129 caps between them, the other five replacements share just 12 caps, with Ulster's Rory Best and Neil Best yet to play in a senior Test match.
But it is Bowe's face, the fair hair and ready smile, that has the "new kid on the block" appeal. At 6ft 3in and heavier than his officially listed 14 stone, he will also have a physical presence.
"I hope it wasn't just the fact that I might be physically up for it," says Bowe. "My form this season I've been quite happy with. I would hope that would have helped as well. It's a number of things running through his (O'Sullivan's) head when he gave me the nod in front of other people. I just hope to go out and do what he asks of us."
