INTERVIEW WITH DENIS LEAMYGIVEN THAT Munster have signed Western Province flanker Justin Melck on a three-month contract, it's a cast-iron certainty the medical team believe Denis Leamy's shoulder should take that time to heal. The Ireland flanker underwent reconstruction in mid-July, which would take the rehabilitation process to around mid-October.

Hanging about doing rehab is not what players like to do and Leamy is in no mind to try to make unrealistic targets like the November international series. In a conversation with Leo Cullen on Wednesday the Leinster captain advised caution.

"I was just talking to Leo there and he said he made great strides initially, then it slowed down," said the Munster and Ireland flanker. Leamy's decision to go under the knife came in Australia during Ireland's summer tour, when, not for the first time, he was sidelined because of the shoulder.

"It was a reconstruction job, basically," he says. "I'd a few tears in there that needed to be sorted out. It's an injury that has been there for a while but it started to flare up in Australia and that's when I decided to have a good look in there and see what's going on."

As for the new arrival, the 25-year-old former South African under-21 Melck was parachuted in on Wednesday without the players knowing too much about it. It appears the European champions do not like their players to become too complacent.

"I only got a text message about it myself yesterday (Tuesday). You'd have to view him coming in as a positive thing and it will bring the best out of everyone, keep us on our toes," says Leamy. "I think that Rua (Tipoki) coming in last year and Paul Warwick gave a new dimension to the squad."

For now Leamy's focus is on keeping positive about the injury, sticking to what the doctors and physiotherapists are telling him and remaining disciplined. He can also watch from the sideline in Musgrave Park tomorrow as new head coach Tony McGahan takes Munster into their final warm-up match against London Irish and into the team's first season of competition without Declan Kidney since 2005.

"Yeah, it's exciting. It's something different," says Leamy. "Tony has done head coach before but over in Munster he's under the microscope a little bit more, I expect. Certainly he's up for the challenge. Everyone is buzzing at the moment.

"Declan had his own way of doing things. He is very much a psychologist as much as anything else. We had to look for nothing from Declan. Off the pitch he had everything planned. Everything was laid out. He was meticulous. Sometimes he would take a back step from the coaching and let the other boys get on with it. Tony is very much hands on and does a lot of the coaching stuff himself."

With the first competitive match scheduled for a week's time in Murrayfield, Munster's Magners League record has become something of a novel talking point over the years. One of the top clubs in Europe over the last five years, Munster have conquered the more difficult of tasks and won the Heineken Cup twice but have won the Magners (formerly Celtic) League only once, in the 2002-03 season. Leinster won it in the inaugural season the year before.

"The one thing that disappointed us last year was losing home games to Leinster, Glasgow and Cardiff. They're hard defeats to stomach and on that sort of home record you are not going to win the Magners League. You need to win all your home games or at worst slip up once, then get a bag full of points on the road. That's what the likes of Leinster and Ulster have done and we need to start doing that."

Munster's problem has evidently been their European success and last season they were floating around down the table in and around Connacht's position before they put on a late push and got themselves into third place. In the tactics room of Thomond Park, priorities must be put in place.

"What people would argue is that towards the latter stages of the Heineken Cup we were possibly all but out of the Magners League. We probably had other priorities. Starting off now this season both competitions will be treated with equal respect. It is important when the internationals are away or when there are a few injuries that other people take up the mantle because they are the big games that need to be won," says Leamy

"When we're missing the likes of our key players like Rog (Ronan O'Gara) or Paulie (O'Connell) or someone like that it is important that other guys take charge of the situation."

In the short term that will not be the flanker. But come the New Year the Tipperary man will surely be on Kidney's radar once again.