MUNSTER DEFENCE COACH Denis Leamy has no doubt that Samoan prop Michael Ala’alatoa will slot right in at Thomond Park having worked with the tighthead when they were both at Leinster.

Ala’alatoa linked up with his new teammates today after joining from Clermont Auvergne for the rest of the season, and he could be thrown in at the deep end when Munster travel to play Johann van Graan’s Bath in the opening round of the Champions Cup on Saturday night.

Munster have been relying on 37-year-old John Ryan and 22-year-old academy player Ronan Foxe at tighthead since Oli Jager joined Roman Salanoa on the injured list in October.

But Leamy is fully confident that 34-year-old Ala’alatoa, whose 24 caps for Samoa included two World Cup tournaments, is ready to do a job as they bid to bounce back from their first loss of the season against the Stormers last weekend.

“Michael is settling in. Obviously I know Michael from our time with Leinster and he’s a really good guy and he’s somebody that will fit in really well around this place.

“At the moment he’s just obviously getting the handle on basic calling systems and I’d say just getting to know people first day in, but I think it’s considered a very good start,” said Leamy.

The former Irish international said they have reviewed the URC loss to the Stormers when they failed to score in the second half as the Cape Town side came from 21-6 adrift at the break to win 27-21.

Leamy said there are similarities between the Stormers and Bath and that they need to chalk up the scores when they are on top.

“We had a pretty exceptional first 30 minutes and that was really pleasing. We got ourselves into a strong lead and were controlling the game really well and it went away a little bit from us in terms of our set-piece. It came under pressure a little bit and we just lost our way in terms of applying pressure on the Stormers.

“We had opportunities from around the 35th minute to the 55th minute to work the scoreboard and we didn’t take it and they had opportunities as well that they didn’t take and we just probably didn’t apply pressure in the right areas of pitch.

“So just big learnings around how we can get them and get opposition teams into pressure cycles, pressure them high up the pitch and then convert that into scores and you know some of our discipline the other night wasn’t good enough which allowed the Stormers to release pressure and get back up the pitch.

“And you know a team like the Stormers, and Bath are probably no different when they get into your 22 close to your line, they’re very hard to handle because of their size and their body weight,” added Leamy.