The former second-row was doing the television analysis and didn’t hold back in assessing his old side’s efforts, branding them as “embarrassing” and “completely unacceptable”.
Before Saturday, Munster had never lost to the Italian minnows who celebrated their 42-33 win wildly at full-time. But for Graham Rowntree’s men it has led to a dark couple of days of introspection.
“You need a thick skin,” Leamy said. “When I moved to Cork in 2000, a raw 18-year-old, I met Donncha and became hugely friendly with him. Donncha O’Callaghan means a lot to me personally and means a lot to the group and when Donncha 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 much media – but I wanted to hear what Donncha 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 … we trust the players to say [to them], ‘Look, it’s happened, we’ve 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.”
Leamy is looking for a response from Munster against the Ospreys in Cork this Saturday and they’ll be boosted by the probable return of international trio Peter O’Mahony, Jack Crowley and captain Tadhg Beirne.
However, there are plenty of headaches for Rowntree on the injury front with Thaakir Abrahams, Billy Burns, Shane Daly and Ruadhán Quinn out injured, while Alex Nankivell is a doubt.
It appears Thomas Ahern’s return to action is still some weeks away, with the talented back-row no closer to overcoming his ankle issue.
“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… 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.”
Leamy is looking for a response from Munster against the Ospreys in Cork on Saturday and they’ll be boosted by the probable return of Peter O’Mahony, Jack Crowley and captain Tadhg Beirne.
However, there are plenty of headaches for Graham Rowntree on the injury front with Thaakir Abrahams, Billy Burns, Shane Daly and Ruadhan Quinn out injured, while Alex Nankivell is a doubt.
It appears Thomas Ahern’s return to action is still some weeks away, with the talented back-row no closer to overcoming his ankle issue.
“Unfortunately, Tom’s rehab and recovery has slowed a little bit,” Leamy said.
“I’m not quite sure if he’s had a setback but it just slowed down a little bit. We’re still waiting for him to be fully available so we’re watching that space but fingers crossed it’s soon.”
