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21st January 2019
03:41pm GMT

Doug Howlett (14) celebrating a Munster score with Simon Zebo and Peter O'Mahony (8) - SPORTSFILE[/caption]
O'Mahony was highly regarded within the Munster set-up from an early age and took his leadership qualities to the national stage when, at the age of 19 in 2009, he captained Ireland's U20s. The following year, he captained Munster A to a British & Irish Cup final and, at 21, he led out the Munster senior team, against Dragons, for the first time.
He was well established in that Munster team by August 2012 when it was announced that Howlett would be taking over the captaincy from Paul O'Connell. Howlett's story about why he stepped in to lead the province shows how much faith was placed in young O'Mahony.
"There are a lot of elements to leading a team. Sure, there is the on-pitch side but there is a lot of work that goes on off the pitch. I'd hope to think that that is where my expertise lay - in bringing people along, developing young players and instilling confidence in them to do what they are good at. That is what I wanted to do, and what I treasured as captain. "And, as we all know, it's never one person on the pitch. It is a group of people. A group of leaders that I was able to lean on, to help me with on-pitch decisions. Guys like Pete O'Mahony, who probably wasn't quite ready to step into that role fully. I was filling a stop-gap so they could develop him a bit further. "I was lucky with that group of players that I had. Decision-makers like Billy Holland, who is another astute rugby player and we are all recognising that at the moment. I would do a lot of my work off the pitch, during the week, and we were quite clear on what we needed to do on the pitch. Pete would make a lot of the calls around the breakdown and I'd call a lot of the counter-attacks."That 2012/13 season and O'Mahony, just turned 23, was firmly in the Munster leadership group with Howlett, O'Connell, Ronan O'Gara and Billy Holland. The next season, with Howlett retired, O'Mahony stepped up as Munster captain. That 77-times capped All Blacks legend Doug Howlett compared his captaincy role as a stop-gap measure while Munster allowed eventual leader Pete O'Mahony to take up the matle says so much about the player, and man. CHECK OUT THAT HOUSE OF RUGBY EPISODE HERE: https://youtu.be/gsvnwBCAOQ8

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