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Bowe salutes the crowd during the 2009 Lions Tour. ©INPHO/Billy Stickland
Lions 2013

More of the same from try-scoring Bowe and he'll be a Lion this summer

‘He will hopefully do enough to convince Warren Gatland he warrants a seat on the plane,” said the Ulster coach Mark Anscombe.

‘CANT WAIT FOR my first game back at Ravers for a while’ read the pre-match tweet from Tommy Bowe on Friday.

It did not take Tommy Bowe long to get back in the scoring groove at Ravenhill as he finished off a fine move initiated by Nick Williams and progressed by Paul Marshall.

Bowe’s fourth try of an injury-hit season came in only his ninth start. The positive news for the winger, apart from Ulster hitting winning form in the Pro12, is the fact that his right knee has stood up to the rigours of league and cup action.

Two games in six days is just what Bowe needs as he looks to end the first season of his second coming at Ulster with some silverware. It will do no harm for his hopes of impressing Lions coach Warren Gatland.

“It’s good to see Tommy get 60 minutes,” Ulster coach Mark Anscombe told TheScore.ie. ”For every outing he gets he’ll improve on that and it will give him confidence. I thought, in the first half particularly, he was looking good.

“Another game under his belt and I think everyone will see he’ll just get better and better, and sharper. A couple of kicks didn’t go his way; they were a bit big. Who knows, with a little less weight on them he could have got a couple more tries.”

Bowe enjoyed his Ravenhill comeback. (©INPHO/Presseye/Darren Kidd)

Anscombe’s response when asked if Bowe could play his way into Lions contention before Gatland names his squad [on 30 April] was ‘no doubt’. The 29-year-old started all three Tests of the 2009 Lions Tour to South Africa.

“He’s a class act,” the New Zealander added. “He just has to get his confidence up.

The Lions team isn’t named for another couple of weeks. By then he will have another couple of games under his belt and hopefully do enough to convince Warren Gatland he warrants a seat on the plane.

Anscombe declared, “You’d like to think that we’d have two or three guys knocking on the door… they would do justice to the team.”

*Additional reporting by Megan Joyce of the Front Row Union

Welcome back, Tommy! Bowe on the mark as Ulster go top of the Pro12

Henshaw scores first-ever try, as Connacht win in Edinburgh

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