HOME ADVANTAGE FOR Leinster again this weekend means home comforts for James Lowe.
Tomorrow will start with pancakes and a smoothie after a nice kip in his own bed. Not being away in a hotel is very welcome.
“I don’t make breakfast, breakfast is my darling wife’s job and she’s good at pancakes,” says the Leinster wing with a smile.
There will be plenty of snacking and when he’s at home, Lowe’s last pre-match meal is usually a steak sandwich or a pasta dish.
He has taken to golf in a big way so he’ll fill a fair bit of his day before the 8pm kick-off against Leicester sitting on the couch with his dog, Norman, watching the Masters coverage.
Lowe is keen to see how his fellow Kiwi, Ryan Fox, the only New Zealander in the field, goes in his first outing at the famous tournament in Augusta this weekend.
“I follow him and I watch him,” says Lowe. “He hits the ball very, very well, a lot better than me anyway. He’s a master.”
Fox’s father, Grant, won the 1987 Rugby World Cup with the All Blacks and was a selector for the Kiwis up until last year when he stepped away.
Lowe is obviously better at rugby too, but he admits to having caught the golfing bug in a big way.
“It’s getting better, I’ve got a couple of lessons up in Leopardstown, it’s improved exponentially,” says Lowe of his game.
“It’s crazy how much you thought you knew before a professional tells you how bad you are but no, we’re getting there. I’m taking money off boys at the moment, people aren’t happy that I can hit a golf ball now!”
Josh van der Flier and Garry Ringrose played against Lowe and van der Flier’s brother, Johan, recently and the Leinster wing happily reports that he and Johan took money off them.
“I was actually going toe to toe with Josh on the front nine and then he shot two under on the back nine.
“Like, a little bit of sledging and he turned it up, so he’s quite good.”
It’s not hard to imagine Lowe hammering drives deep onto the fairway, but he explains that he has to control his aggression when he’s standing over the ball. Slow and steady is his formula on the golf course.
The 30-year-old is also bringing a great sense of calm to his rugby at the moment. He clearly still loves making powerful carries and big defensive plays, but there’s an intelligence to his contributions for Leinster and Ireland too.
His contributions in the kicking game are particularly crucial, with his massive left boot prominent against Ulster again last weekend. He puts it down to the Gilbert balls.
“Genuinely those balls are just lovely to kick,” explains Lowe. “That’s actually it, I don’t know why there’s such a difference in balls from competition to competition. If they all just made them like the Champions Cup balls, I’d be happy.
“They’re just a fraction heavier so when you put your laces through them, they can travel. It was just a good day at the office with the boot.”
The way Lowe has picked out backfield space suggests that his game understanding has continued to improve, while the same applies to how involved he is in Leinster and Ireland’s phase play attack. Lowe roams all over the place getting touches.
Defensively, his decision-making has improved too. It’s suggested to him that he’s reading the game better than ever, but Lowe says it’s all down to his coaches giving him good info.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things and I’d be ignorant to say… I get told pretty much what to do. We get shown all the pictures that we’re going to see eventually so it’s not coming off the back of me sitting at the computer, watching the last 10 Leicester games,” he says.
“Mate, we’ve got an amazing backroom team doing an incredible job making sure when these pictures arise we can execute them and then coaches who put us in those situations at training. So it’s not just me, mate!”
The weather forecast for tomorrow is clear at the time of writing, so Lowe will hope to get a few more opportunities to go at the Tigers with ball in hand in this Champions Cup quarter-final.
Having beaten Leicester 23-14 at Welford Road at this stage of last season’s competition, Lowe wants Leinster to take full advantage of being at home now.
“Having the luxury of playing at home is awesome. When we went there, the pitch is tight, I think it’s like 65 metres. Then it was an absolutely beautiful spring day but for some reason, the grass was probably an inch thick, it was wet all of a sudden, little things like that where you get to dictate the game you want to play.
“Mate, if you give us an absolute carpet to play on and don’t water it an hour before the game, we’re pretty confident going into it.
“So we’ve put ourselves in a great position to play at home for the next knock-out games we’re a part of, so we need to really capitalise on that.”
