Denis Leamy gives his reaction to Donncha O'Callaghan's RTE criticism of Munster Rugby v Zebre

Defence coach Denis Leamy played with Donncha O'Callaghan for Munster and Ireland and wanted to hear what the Corkman had to say on RTE after the Zebre loss

By: irishmirror.ie

Oct 01 2024
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Denis Leamy gives his reaction

Denis Leamy has no issue with TV pundit Donncha O'Callaghan's scathing criticism of Munster as "embarrassing" in losing to Zebre.

Reds defence coach Leamy is a former team-mate of O'Callaghan - both for the province and for Ireland - and was interested to hear what the Corkman had to say on RTE after Munster's shock 42-33 loss in Parma last Saturday.

Munster topped the regular season table in the URC last term, having won the tournament outright the previous year, while Zebre finished in last place.

"Munster will look back on that and should be embarrassed of that performance," blasted O'Callaghan. "The amount of poor performances, the amount of individual sloppy mistakes, was just completely unacceptable."

Munster had a "very thorough, honest" review of the game at UL on Tuesday morning, according to Leamy, and will look for a massive response against Ospreys at Virgin Media Park on Saturday night.

Leamy said that the Reds had to accept the criticism that came flying their way after such an early season set-back.

“Yeah, you need a thick skin," said the Tipp man. "When I moved to Cork in 2000, a raw 18-year-old, I met Donncha and became hugely friendly with him.

Ireland's Donncha O'Callaghan and Denis Leamy in the 2011 Six Nations Championship (Image: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan)

"Donncha O’Callaghan means a lot to me personally and means a lot to the group and when Donncha O’Callaghan says something like that you have to take it on board.

“When someone said to me Donncha had said something – I specifically don’t read papers or match media but I wanted to hear what Donnacha had said.

"I heard what he said and his comments were very fair. He didn’t say anything that we hadn’t said, that the boys didn’t say.

“They respect Donncha for those comments and you can’t say that they’re wrong. I think the boys, the hurt is not from what Donncha said, the hurt within the group is knowing that we can be so much better.

“We’ve shown it in big games over the last few years. Yes, there was different players involved, there’s new players coming in, there’s players coming in from the AIL but the mindset and the performance shouldn’t change.

"And we trust the players to say (to them), ‘look, it’s happened, we have to deal with a little bit of hurt, the criticism that comes is always going to come with it, it is Munster here’.

“We expect and we hold ourselves at the highest standards so anything that comes with a poor performance is expected - and we wouldn’t want it any other way.”

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