DENIS LEAMY SAID that Munster need to turn the page quickly and not dwell too much on their painful loss to Leinster as they head north to take on a rejuvenated Ulster side on Friday night in Belfast.

The Munster squad and management assembled in Limerick this Monday morning to rake over the coals of a seventh successive home loss to their arch rivals.

Both of their league defeats this season have both come at Thomond Park, which no doubt added to the sense of disappointment with Saturday’s outcome.

“Look, any time you lose in Thomond it’s not ideal, it’s not what we set our standards at,” said defence coach Leamy. “But I think the Stormers and Leinster are two of the best sides in our league, so they have the ability to go anywhere and win. I think certainly against the Stormers, we didn’t produce enough quality on the night to win the game.

“Then against Leinster, they get an early lead and I think we do well to stay in the game and stay in touch, but ultimately they find a way to engineer a couple of penalties and their defence on the night was very strong. We just didn’t pressure them enough and get points on the board.”

He said Munster don’t have any new injury concerns following the 13-8 loss to Leo Cullen’s men and while they need to get ready for Ulster they also need to examine what went wrong as they tried to execute a first double over Leinster in eleven years.

“We’re still working through that. Obviously, there’s a disappointment within the group, but I think ultimately on the night we just weren’t good enough in our own key areas, like the breakdown,” said Leamy.

“We just didn’t apply enough pressure to get on the scoreboard against quality sides like Leinster, who are a really, really good side. They are key battles that you have to win and they’re the work-ons going forward for us.”

Munster have won all three away games in the URC this season against Scarlets, Leinster and Dragons but Leamy knows Ulster are fired-up for this one, not least after what happened in the corresponding game last year just before Christmas when Tom Farrell completed his hat-trick in the final play to snatch a 22-19 win in Ravenhill.

That was a fifth defeat on the spin for Ulster and ultimately they finished 14th in the table in Richie Murphy’s first full season in charge and were ten points adrift of the last qualifying spot, with just seven wins from their 18 URC games.

But Leamy has been impressed by what he has seen of Ulster this season and Murphy’s side will go into this round fifth in the table with five wins from seven, and are just three points adrift of second-place Munster who have played one game more.

“Ulster are flying it. I think they’re showing a lot of quality there,” added Leamy. “Obviously, Richie Murphy has done a really good job over the last while and they’ve got very good coaches in Jimmy Duffy and Mark Sexton and people like that, Willie Faloon as well, so they’re really well put together and I saw them against Connacht the other night.

“Some of their attack is really lethal and loads of quality young Irish players, guys that are going to be there in thereabouts within Irish squads. I think it’s a really good challenge for us. I think defensively, Ulster are one of the top sides in terms of their attack, so defensively they’re going to put us under a lot of pressure. So that’s something to get excited about and to get focused about.”