James Lowe has scored some spectacular tries in his time but confesses that his latest should have been chalked off.
The Leinster flyer provided the perfect response to France's first half try at the Aviva Stadium with a scintillating run, leap and touch down in the left hand corner as he was being tackled by Damian Penaud.
But the reaction on Lowe's face said it all when Wayne Barnes, after consulting with his TMO, awarded the try in the second round clash 11 days ago.
The 30-year-old was sure he got away with that one.
And, when asked yesterday ahead of the upcoming clash with Italy how he was going to top his two tries in this Six Nations against Wales - from a midfield interception - and against France, Lowe smiled: "Well, I don't think one of them was a try."
The match officials watched Lowe's effort again and again, focusing on whether his boot touched the grass outside the touchline before he touched down.
But he says himself that they should have been focused more on the grounding as the ball was touched down on the touchline.
"Man, well I actually knew as soon as I put it down," recalled Lowe. "I was thinking, 'Ah damn, this is out...don't worry about the foot'.
"Sure look, at home you get the rub of the green sometimes. Away from home, I don't think it was going to be a try so you take it when you can.
"I thought I put the ball down on the line but obviously, like the curvature...I saw it from a bird's eye view and I thought, 'Ah!'."
And his foot? "Don't worry about the foot! The ball was out, man! I didn't know at the time that my foot was out.
"Hey, Penaud was screaming down my neck, shoulder to shoulder with me...I don't care about my feet!
"I didn't know that my foot was out and fortunately when you're at home at Lansdowne Road...".
That's even before it is suggested to Lowe that Garry Ringrose's long pass to him was forward.
"Ah don't worry about that, let's not break this all down, we keep going back," he grinned.
"It was a good pass from Garry, in fairness - it was 20 metres, nice and flat and zippy."
Lowe and Ireland rode their luck but still fully deserved their 32-19 victory in the meeting of the world's top ranked sides.
"I know even without it you could scratch those seven points off and we still win, but in the biggest games you do need a little bit of luck to go your way," he said. "We were very fortunate about that.
"If I can carry that on into this weekend then awesome, but it's about performance and results and if I get on the scoresheet or not it doesn't bother me, as long as we win."
Ireland are expected to do just that to keep themselves on course for a Grand Slam shot.
Lowe and the rest of Andy Farrell's backline are itching to get more involved in the try scoring as, at times, Ireland's forwards have taken the battering ram approach from close range, with mixed results.
Farrell has acknowledged that Ireland must be better in those situations - and Lowe agrees.
"Oh, you need to come up to some meetings, man," he laughed.
"I don't want to bag them (the forwards) because they also do a tremendous job - it's probably us just converting a lot more of those chances.
"When you get into that (area), five-metres from the line, I can understand why they get a little bit excited and statistically it's very hard to defend if you do keep it in tight as well.
"But if we can be more effective and efficient around that area it will go a long way."
Still, Lowe warns against any temptation for Ireland to go into full attack mode against opponents who went so close to beating France.
"We don't want to get into an open, frantic game against Italy," he stated.
"If we do spread the ball wide, we want it on our own terms and make sure we're on the front foot and all those little bits of the game that we need to get right before the outside backs can express themselves.
"But I think there's going to be opportunity - it's about making sure we're in the right place at the right time to exploit it.
"I've full faith in our forward pack to do a job against a confrontational Italian side."
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