WE’VE NEVER BEATEN them in a over a century of meetings but Ireland still believes, according to Tommy Bowe.

Speaking yesterday evening, Tommy Bowe accepts it will take perfection to beat the All Blacks for the first time when the side’s meet at the Aviva Stadium tomorrow.

The world’s best team and Tri-Nations champions have never lost to Ireland in 23 matches dating back to 1905 and it would take a seismic upset for that to change tomorrow.

But the Ospreys winger is looking forward to the biggest clash of the November series, arguably.

There’s a lot of excitement because New Zealand are playing some great rugby at the moment. It’s a massive challenge for us.

The intensity of training has stepped up a notch and we know that if we want to compete against these boys we need to be at the top of our game for 80 minutes and that’s what we’ve been working on.

New Zealand like to play at a certain intensity and it’s up to us to match that and go up a level.

There is a definite confidence that we have the ability to beat them. Their record against us is why we’re serious underdogs for this match once again and we know every player has to put everything on the line for 80 minutes.

Hopefully we’ll get the bounce of the ball and it will be our day.

There’s no panicking going on. We know we are underdogs but we know that given the players we have, if things works out for us we’re well capable of victory.’

Perfection, eh?