Ireland and Ulster winger Tommy Bowe admits he faces a long road to recovery following the knee injury sustained in the World Cup quarter-final loss to Argentina.

The Monaghan man underwent major surgery to repair posterior cruciate ligament and meniscal injuries to his right knee and will miss all of the 2016 Six Nations.

Though the operation was carried out in October, Bowe admits that it is too early to say if it can bee deemed a success.

“I’m still in the leg brace. Maybe moving about is a little bit easier than it was two weeks ago. It’s still very early stages. I’ll just let the body heal the way it does.

I had surgery six weeks ago on Monday and so far things are looking good in the way that it’s feeling a lot better week on week.

“Hopefully in January, I’ll be able to take the brace off and be able to hopefully be told that the surgery has done what it’s meant to do.

“I can start rehabbing from there and get myself back into getting the leg back up the strength it needs to be to start playing again.”

Aside from Bowe, Ulster had been enjoying good fortune on the injury front — until their bruising Guinness Pro12 encounter with Edinburgh last Friday.

Since then Dan Tuohy, Darren Cave and Peter Nelson have all joined Bowe on the treatment table, but the most significant injury was a serious hamstring tear picked up by Iain Henderson.

There are fears he may be ruled out of the Six Nations — but Bowe believes his team mate’s impressive healing power could yet surprise the medics.

As a result, Henderson is expected to be ruled out of next spring’s RBS Six Nations, but although he admits that the versatile international will be a huge loss, Bowe did reference his impressive healing power as a reason to be optimistic about the remainder of Ulster’s season.

“It’s a huge setback. I think Iain showed the world-class nature and the talent that he has at the World (Cup). And I think for his ball carrying ability, to have someone like Paul O’Connell stepping out of the Irish fold, the likes of Hendy would have been great to come into that se-tup.

“He’s going to be a big loss for both Ulster and Ireland. He’s got incredible healing power and that’s hopefully something that will be a good thing because he ruptured some sort of ligaments in his finger, and it looked like he could be out for a couple of months, but he was back playing after three or four weeks. He is a very quick healer and he has a huge pain threshold.”

That injury crisis comes ahead of Ulster’s crucial Champions Cup clash against Toulouse at Kingspan Stadium tomorrow night. “It’s going to be a very difficult match. I played Toulouse and we had a great performance against them a few years ago at home.

“If we win back to back the next two weeks — it’s not going to be easy – but we do that and we are right back in the frame.

“To lose to Saracens at home, it can’t be done, you have to win your home games. We are going to be really relying on the next two weeks to turn around the season in terms of European competition,” Bowe added.

Tommy Bowe was speaking at a Kingspan hosted media event in Dublin to preview tomorrow night in Kingspan Stadium. Fans can stay up to date with the latest Kingspan competitions and promotions by following @KingspanStadium on Twitter.