Tommy Bowe slips his bare feet out of his flip-flops and makes himself at home. Though he is newly showered his hair is back in formation: stylishly spiky, as if he has reversed into a wind tunnel. His appearance, though, is defined by his smile. It is the first point of contact and a shining accessory to his personality.

It is good to see him where he is now, knowing where he’s been before. The triumphs of the last 12 months have turned him into a rugby star and a commercial entity and left him unspoiled. According to his agent Ryan Constable there is a new offer or proposal reaching his inbox every day which means they must be choosy and restrained. But when you raise Bowe with his Ospreys coach Sean Holley the first thing he wants to clarify is Bowe’s “humility”. Everything has changed except him.

If humility wasn’t already in his nature there were plenty of opportunities for circumstances to force it upon him. On the way to recognition he was diverted at times by doubt and rejection. On those roads this was an unlikely destination. It is little more than two years since Eddie O’Sullivan named a 30-man squad for the World Cup and left him out. It would be wrong to condemn that selection retrospectively on the form of the last 12 months and at the time there was no general outrage but it was regarded as a hard call nonetheless; for Bowe it was traumatic.

Even the manner of it was cruel. Bowe knew he was borderline and the players were told that if their phones didn’t ring on the morning of the squad announcement they should take it as good news. Bowe, though, was a special case. Shane Horgan was battling an injury and Bowe was held in the squad for three weeks as emergency cover. His phone didn’t ring and yet his number was up. What it meant was a spell in purgatory without any real prospect of getting to Heaven.

“I’d been making the 30-man squad in the four years before,” he says, “so I was wondering, ‘What’s going on?’ That was an ultimate low. After that I was going through a patch where I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Sometimes a coach has to make a gut decision. I’d love to have heard a reason why I wasn’t getting picked or what the reason was but I didn’t get a reason. I had to go back and look at myself and see what I had to do.”

At the time it amplified the view that Bowe wasn’t quite good enough: not quick enough, not smart enough. Solid. Deficient. Dispensible. Eighteen months earlier, when Ireland conceded five first-half tries against France in Paris, he was the only Irish player to be dropped. Many were culpable but he was sacrificed. One high-profile newspaper pundit awarded him zero out of 10 in his player ratings.

Bowe didn’t start another game for Ireland until the second-string went on a summer tour of Argentina before the 2007 World Cup and in that comeback he crocked his shoulder after three minutes. Being omitted from the World Cup squad, though, brought his career to a crossroads. “He took it pretty bad,” says Constable. “When you look at the players who were picked ahead of him it’s hard to see how that could have eventuated. He really internalised the disappointment of the non-selection and used it as motivation to be where he is now.”

He opened his mind and took soundings. He approached Mark McCall and Allen Clarke, his former coaches at Ulster, and asked for a no-holds-barred critique of his game. He opened his heart to his parents, sat down with a sports psychologist and with the leading rally driver, Andrew Nesbitt. He was reaching out for answers but ultimately it came back to him.

“I changed my game, tried to get more involved,” says Bowe. “Standing out [on the wing] in Ravenhill in the p****** rain on a Friday night you can’t expect to get much ball. It was up to me to try and go looking for it. It was a mindset more than anything. It was up to me to get myself more involved. That was a big start.”

Leaving Ulster at the end of that season, though, was the radical phase of his makeover. Leicester were interested but Ospreys were in the Magners League and with the Irish management in mind that would help his visibility. He discussed the move with Eddie O’Sullivan and he was sceptical. Ospreys had a stellar back line and he wondered how Bowe would fit in. To reach the next level, though, he needed to take that chance.

“Ulster were a team that was struggling at the time but my game was pushing on,” he says. “Moving over to Ospreys . . . they play a style of rugby that suits me. But at the same time I’ve improved my workrate and my confidence. It’s been a challenge for me and a bit of a kick up the arse and it’s worked.”

For all parties there has been a massive dividend: “We needed somebody of quality,” says Holley, “and somebody that was on the way up. He brought a lot of level-headedness and that has had an impact on some of our squad members who needed that. After a few months we brought him into our leadership group. Young Welsh players tend to be a bit within themselves, believe it or not, but Tommy is not like that. He will often come up to you and ask why we did that and want something clarified. As a coach that’s what you want.

“When he came to us we discussed the possibility of getting a second position and we’ve managed that too. He’s fast becoming a top-class 13 and he can still get better. He can become more tactically astute, he can become more of a leader and he can get faster. He hasn’t got out and out gas over 10 metres like Shane Williams or over 60 metres like Nikki Walker but he’s quite deceptive. He has rugby speed.”

His form with club and country made him an automatic choice for the Lions squad but it was still a stretch. Everything about it was on a different level. The squad assembled for training at Pennyhill Park and, physically, he felt bombproof. Then the bomb went off. “The intensity of training in those first couple of days was like nothing I’d seen before. Even with that fitness [from a long season] I was near enough coming downstairs on my arse.”

People still wondered quietly if his limitations would be exposed; instead, he pushed new boundaries. He started three of the warm-up games, scored four tries and made five. Bowe’s reputation as a finisher was established but revealing himself as a creator made people see him in a new light. When he sums up the experience in a short sentence he includes a detail loaded with personal significance: “To have played three Tests,” he says, “and one at 13 was something else.”

Playing a Test for the Lions at 13 was recognition for him as a footballer that had always been withheld. Even when critics spoke kindly of him they didn’t speak of him in those terms. On the biggest stage he had made that leap.

Ospreys gave him a five-week break — “to shower my head” — but when he returned he hit the ground running: he crossed for a try in five successive games and for the pivotal Heineken Cup matches against Leicester and Clermont Auvernge he was picked at 13 ahead of Sonny Parker, an experienced international centre. “We’ve seen a slightly new Tommy on the field,” says Holley. “What we’ve noticed is that he’s trying that bit harder because he has standards to meet.”

It is a load he is fit to carry. “I feel now, I’m a good enough player to play at this level,” Bowe says. “I’m very confident that I can get the ball in my hands and make an impact on the game.” No doubt. Not now.

Gordon Hamilton’s Best and Worst, page 17