Peter O’Mahony has hit back at Ronan O’Gara’s criticism of Ireland captain Johnny Sexton.
The Munster and Ireland flanker was responding to questions from Off The Ball's Máire Treasa Ní Cheallaigh about O’Gara’s comments that he wouldn’t have chosen Sexton as captain after the retirement of Rory Best.
“I understand that people have jobs to do and people are working for these [media] companies and that’s what they need to do,” O’Mahony said.
“They might be their opinions, and they’re completely entitled to them, it just doesn’t give me any positivity or any buzz to pick up an article and see good or bad stuff written about someone,” he said.
O’Mahony claimed that he doesn’t listen to criticism from the media because the team’s hardest critics are actually themselves.
“Our biggest critics are ourselves and they’re the people whose opinions that I respect and want to impress and play for,” he said.
In his response to his teammates being criticised, Peter O’Mahony explained that how hard they work in training goes unnoticed to those in the media.
“I know Jack McGrath, I know how hard these guys are training, I know Johnny [Sexton], I know Conor Murray, I know these guys better than these people [journalists] will ever know them.
“I understand how hard they’re working, I know how good they are. So that’s my narrative, that’s my little article on them and what I have every day with them,” he said.
The rise of in-depth scouting and analysis has meant that sportspeople have never been better prepared for their games.
O’Mahony continued on to say that if Ireland were to read everything about them in the media, they wouldn’t have the time to engage with all that analysis.
“We've got a huge amount to be worrying about and, with all due respect, I just don’t buy into all the stuff that’s written about us.
“If you were to digest all of it you wouldn’t have enough time to go through your own analysis stuff with the amount of it that’s there,” he said.
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