Relieved champion Peter O'Mahony ready to kick on with Ireland

Relief is still the primary emotion felt by Peter O'Mahony when he reflects on Munster’s improbable but highly impressive United Rugby Championship success.

It’s seven weeks on from their final victory over the DHL Stormers in Cape Town, which came on the back of play-off victories on the road in Glasgow and in Dublin against Leinster.

And as O’Mahony strolls into a conference room in Ireland's High Performance Centre in Abbotstown to chat to a group of reporters you can almost see the spring in his step, the weight off his shoulders.

The back row has been Munster skipper for 10 years, he always fronted up but was never quite able to hide the frustration at being asked the same questions time after time as Munster failed to get over the line.

That’s all changed now.

"Yeah, it was nice," he says about walking into camp a champion.

"It was more relief for me than anything. It's been 10 years since I was asked to captain Munster and obviously, very little to show for it.

"It was one of the proudest memories of my career, lifting it with Keith [Earls] having gone through a lot together.

"Obviously I could have picked a big chunk of guys to do it with but I thought he was a fitting man with everything that's he's done for the club.

"Coming back in here, it was two or three weeks after it, it was in the back of the memory a little bit.

"We're kicking on and a couple of powerful meetings in here at the start, you flip the page fairly quickly.

"But it was great, obviously, a huge leap. Hugely proud of it."

The 33-year-old already had four Six Nations winners medals to his name and has captained the Lions but success with his home province was just "different".

"I've been lucky to win a handful of things with Ireland and as I said it was kind