There is no quick fix, no silver bullet for Munster. Denis Leamy, part of the restoration project, faithfully paints a picture of patience, diligence and perseverance.
For the former Irish backrow, who moved from Leinster over the summer to become Munster’s defence coach, the return has had the feel of a kind of homecoming, a reversion back to a place of natural order.
It is not difficult to see why Leamy feels he is in the right neighbourhood. He played his entire professional career with Munster, lining out at 19-years-old for the first time until an unyielding hip injury over a decade later brought it crashing down.
But years at Leinster working with Leo Cullen, Stuart Lancaster, Felipe Contepomi and Robyn McBride has tooled him for the challenge in Thomond Park. And while dedicated fans yearn for a past when Munster ruled Europe, Leamy and head coach Graham Rowntree have no desire to transport the Leinster game 100 miles south. Nor, Leamy believes, would it work.
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“So, taking one game plan from Leinster and trying to put it into Munster, that’s never going to work. That’s fool’s gold,” he says.
“I suppose I’ll lean on my experiences and my understanding of being here as a player, growing up here. I was exposed to a lot of what was really, really good about Munster through the noughties and I think there’s loads and loads for us there to lean on, and to develop, and to flesh out.
“There’s no doubt about it, we have a unique DNA and unique mindset and that comes out in Munster people all the time. There’s great values in this province and we’ll go back to them. But we need to develop the skills of the modern game in terms of catch, pass, tackle technique, breakdown work. We need to be really good in those areas as well.”
Part of the process will be to try to get Munster players back into Irish jerseys. In Ireland’s final Test against New Zealand last summer, the starting team had Peter O’Mahony and Tadhg Beirne starting, with Keith Earls, Joey Carbery and Conor Murray on the bench.
When Leamy was playing, it was alongside international forwards Paul O’Connell, Mick Galwey, Anthony Foley, John Hayes, Eddie Halvey, Marcus Horan, Denis Leamy, Donncha O’Callaghan, Mick O’Driscoll, Alan Quinlan and Frankie Sheahan.
“Historically, I was here when the journey kind of started in terms of how do we get better? How do we grow as a professional unit? One of the first things was getting players into Irish jerseys. It has always been a challenge. It’s going to be the challenge going forward.
“Obviously, Munster doing well, Munster winning games, that helps. The collective helps the individual get into that slot. Know what I mean? Generally, in Irish rugby the most successful, or dominant team on the island gets the most players on the Irish team.”
Munster are a young group of players involved in a journey that has recently begun says Leamy. Talk of beating teams he explains, needs to be qualified. It is not that Munster lack ambition. They don’t. But behavioural change, habitual change, is not something that can be learned off by heart overnight.
A large part of the equation is time. He says that it will not happen in a week or two weeks or even a month. It might take five, six, seven months. There will be ups and downs along the way. But that, he believes, is going to be part of the ride this season.
Nor is he too arrogant to know that what he gleaned from the former England national coach or the Argentinian captain, and the standards Leinster apply day in day out, will not be profitable in the weeks ahead.
“Look, there’s no doubt I have learned a huge amount in Leinster,” he says. “A huge amount. An awful lot of my beliefs in rugby are probably shaped by the people I met up there.
“You take something from every one of them. There’s just a huge amount of rugby knowledge in that group. How they go about their business, how they teach players, how they coach players, how they put in place practices to get better and better and better, and how the micro detail is focused on and dissected and worked on.”
If anything, change is what Leamy knows and understands. His first sport was hurling with the Tipperary villages of Boherlahan and Dualla and his dream to follow in the footsteps of Nicky English and Pat Fox to Croke Park. Instead, he ended up with 57 rugby caps and Lansdowne Road and now an opportunity to shape the rugby club he played for.
There is a lot of moving parts. Country and western god Garth Brooks dropping in to a session unannounced this week added another.
“No. I didn’t actually shake hands,” says Leamy, perhaps mulling over whether line dancing is Munster cool or not before outing the big Tyrone centre Chris Farrell as “swooning”. Friends in low places and all that.
But for now it’s work not play, renewal and alteration.
“Talk of silverware, talk of anything like that; we need to be careful,” he advises. “It’s not a lack of ambition. It’s a young group all still finding each other. And it is going to take time.”
