Ask Tommy Bowe about the record the grand slam champions are busy setting and the Ireland wing does not have a clue. He will line up in Paris on Saturday, winning his 30th cap in a game against France that will be ­pivotal to Ireland's attempt to retain the Six Nations title, but he is ­blissfully ­unaware that his team's 12-game unbeaten run is the best in Ireland's history.

"Oh right, not bad, is it?" he says of the sequence, which stretches back to a win over Argentina in November 2008. Still, he is confused. "Is that just for me now or is that the team?"

Bowe could be forgiven for being in a world of his own. He was outstanding against Italy last weekend and his try-­scoring stats are very healthy – he has scored 11 for the Ospreys and one for Ireland this season. Four years on from a remarkable game against France in 2006, when Ireland produced a memorable comeback in a losing cause, he is so far removed from the nervous young 21-year-old who was then playing for the first time at the Stade de France as to be a different player.

That day France went 43-3 ahead early in the second half before Ireland began a recovery that took them to within 12 points. Ireland, who have the flanker Stephen Ferris back in the side on Saturday, began the match employing something France now use as a matter of course: an aggressive defence from the outside in. Early in the first quarter, Bowe came up fast to close space. He slipped. France scored. It got a lot worse before it got better.

"We were blown off the park," he said. "It was a difficult time and things weren't going great for me either. It was just one of those days. What do you think about? Just trying to get back into the game."

Bowe was taken off after an hour. In truth his earlier caps had not been too impressive either and it had not helped that he had been finding his feet while ­Ireland were having their toughest autumn of the Eddie O'Sullivan era, being battered by New Zealand and losing to a struggling Australia side. Clearly the Ulsterman was athletic and strong and had something to offer, but he needed a few breaks if he was to get the message across.

He missed out altogether on the World Cup in 2007 – a lucky break perhaps, given Ireland's failure to reach the quarter-finals – and it was not until last season, by which time he was well settled in Wales with the Ospreys, that Bowe got his nose in front of Leinster's Shane Horgan on Ireland's right wing. And with that, he began to look like a match-winner. He played in the grand slam-clinching game in Wales last season, scoring the second try from distance, and then excelled on tour as a Test Lion in the summer.

"I think it's given [me] an extra bit [of] confidence in myself, the fact that I can go up to the next level again," he says. "I enjoy playing at international level and to really test myself and to get into a Lions team, full of the class that was there, to go over to South Africa, to play good rugby – it's helped me personally, for my confidence."

Bowe watched France's impressive win in Scotland on Sunday but in his present mood, ­nothing scares him. He calls France's aggressive press defence a "spook tactic", which the Ospreys also use to discourage opponents from getting the ball wide.

"It works and there are advantages but with that there are always going to be holes that you can exploit when the ­person comes shooting out of the line," he says. "So it's up to us to find them. If we can start well against these boys and not give them the head start we did in the past it could work in our favour.

"You can see the confidence that's in the team here. We're playing great rugby. Obviously we won the grand slam last ­season playing not the most exciting rugby in the world but [it was] winning rugby. What we want to do is go out there this year and have a proper crack."

Evidently, Bowe believes that Ireland are capable of winning back-to-back Six Nations titles, indeed back-to-back grand slams.

"We probably only played to 50 to 60% of our potential last year but it was enough to win us the championship and I think we have the players to play a bit more ­exciting rugby," he says. "I think that's going to be our real goal this year. To bring that out. And you're going to have to bring that out to beat the French on their own patch."