O’Mahony has high praise for Laulala

Munster captain Peter O’Mahony has praised Casey Laulala’s emergence as a team leader ahead of the province’s RaboDirect Pro12 clash with Leinster tomorrow.

The retirements at the end of last season of Ronan O’Gara and Doug Howlett, the man O’Mahony succeeded as club captain this summer, have removed 350 provincial games and 183 Test caps of experience from the Munster backline. But O’Mahony believes he is not under any pressure to provide a greater vocal presence in the dressing room or on the pitch to fill the void as his side prepares for its biggest challenge to date of the new campaign.

“In Munster, we’re lucky, there always seems to be leaders coming out,” O’Mahony said. “There’s a good couple of young fellas there who are well able to voice their opinions during games and you still have hugely experienced guys there like Paulie [O’Connell] and Donnacha Ryan, Donncha O’Callaghan and these guys, they’re well able to talk as well.

“Casey Laulala has been huge for us over the last year and he’s really settling into a leadership role as well in the backs. Keith Earls as well. He’s still only a young fella but he’s an enormous amount of experience already and he’s been around for a long time. So there’s still plenty of guys there who are well able to speak and voice their opinions so I don’t feel any pressure on myself to talk anymore than I want to or I have to.”

O’Mahony, who captained Ireland on the North American tour, will lead Munster against Leinster with head coach Rob Penney naming his strongest side so far, having admitted the 2006 and 2008 Heineken Cup champions are more than envious of the visitors’ more recent dominance on the European stage.

“I suppose it’s human nature to be jealous,” O’Mahony said. “We get jealous and we want to be the best and obviously there’s a big rivalry there as well, so that adds to it. So, 100%, there definitely is that factor that you want to go back on top and we have to go and show that we’re good enough first. Leinster have proved that they’ve been that good over the last couple of years winning four trophies so we’ve got to get our standards back up there and start proving that we’re one of the best teams in Europe.”