It’s a sick obsession. It’s heart-breaking – James Lowe on his sometimes difficult relationship with the Champions Cup

James Lowe may have a Champions Cup winner’s medal in the cabinet, but the fact he wasn’t selected for the semi-final and final back in 2018 means he has long been determined to right a few wrongs.

That motivation is also fuelled by having lost three finals since Bilbao when Lowe was left out of the match-day squad in favour of Jamison Gibson-Park and Scott Fardy, who Leo Cullen selected as his two permitted Antipodean players.

There are no such issues nowadays with Gibson-Park and Lowe fully-fledged Ireland internationals, but the latter’s love/hate relationship with the Champions Cup is such that there is a sense of unfinished business when it comes to this tournament.

“It’s a sick obsession. It’s heart-breaking,” the winger said, ahead of this evening’s semi-final against Northampton at Croke Park. “Every single year, you try so hard and on the day it’s been so cruel to us for so many years, but we’ll keep going after it.

“It’s funny, it’s such a fickle game because we’re talking how many points in those last two finals? If something else had happened, if a call had gone a different way, if we’d been given a pen at a different time or the interpretation of a ref [was different], we wouldn’t be talking about it, you know?

“It’s the same throughout all the tight matches. We can sit here and argue about every point, but we’re obsessed, and come [this evening], it’s all hands on deck and we’re going to do our best to put our best foot forward and hopefully come away with a result.”

Looking back on Bilbao now, Lowe (31) admits that it was easy to fall into the trap of believing that the good times were there to stay.

“I probably took it for granted, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t play in that Bilbao game, but the training week, and the prep leading up to it, I remember that so well, and the boys performed so well on the day and were able to get over the line.

“Look, we have been trying ever since then and we have put ourselves in a very good position now to give ourselves another crack and that’s what we will do.”

Having brilliantly seen off their nemesis La Rochelle in the quarter-final, the Premiership leaders now stand in Leinster’s way of making a third consecutive Champions Cup final. “Look, no one’s going to care if we lose that we beat La Rochelle in the quarter-final,” Lowe insisted.

“We had them in the pool stages, the boys went over there in horrible weather and did an absolute job, so it came back to Dublin and we managed to put in a performance we were so happy with, but we can’t rest there.”

Despite having grown up in New Zealand, Lowe has been living in Ireland for long enough to have a good idea of what it means to play at Croke Park. So, from that end, he is not taking this unique opportunity for granted.

“I mean, I think everyone understands the history of what Croke Park represents to the Irish people, and I’m sure there’s kids all around the country who dream of one day being able to represent their provinces here and their counties,” Lowe said. Look, I’m well aware of what happened here. It is an enormous occasion. Let’s hope we can do it justice.”

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