COONEY ABSENCE MYSTERY
Ulster No9’s stellar form not enough for recall to Irish squad
ULSTER have made a storming start to the new season, racking up 91 points and a brace of bonus-point wins on successive weekends. It’s early days, but it bodes well for a young side who have been making great strides on Dan McFarland’s watch.
John Cooney has been central to all of it, as usual. The Dublin-born scrum-half has been a hit at Ravenhill since he arrived at the province on the eve of the 2017-18 season.
There was uproar among the Ulster fanbase when the IRFU refused to sign off on a fresh contract extension for Springbok star Ruan Pienaar. The recruitment of Cooney, who had unconvincing stints with Leinster and Connacht, as his replacement was greeted with no shortage of scepticism.
Within a few months, Cooney’s name was being chanted by the home fans in the stands as he conjured some magic on the field, finished off a try-scoring move with a trademark support line or delivered yet another match-winning penalty on the hooter.
It’s been that way at Ulster ever since. Last weekend, Cooney produced yet another brilliant individual display against the Scarlets. Of the 55 points registered at Parc Y Scarlets, Cooney scored 30, including a brace of tries in a relentless 80-minute performance.
Yesterday, Nathan Doak and Michael McDonald left with the Emerging Ireland squad on a flight to South Africa. Both are understudies to Cooney in Ulster. You’d wonder what he made of that decision? At age 32, Cooney is hardly an emerging talent these days, but it must hurt that he’s clearly not on the international radar anymore.
Next month, Ireland head coach Andy Farrell will name his training squad ahead of the autumn international meetings with South Africa, Fiji and Australia. Cooney won’t be waiting by the phone or frantically checking his inbox for an invitation to Abbotstown.
Jamison Gibson-Park, Conor
Murray and Craig Casey will get the call. If there is any room for a fourth candidate, it will more than likely be a rookie like Doak who gets the nod. Again, it must hurt a player who has been knocking on the international door for so long.
You have to go all the way back to February 2020 for Cooney’s last appearance in green, a secondhalf replacement against England in Twickenham. The last of his 11 Test caps.
The hype around Cooney was deafening at the time. Murray was in a post-World Cup slump while his rival was shooting the lights out week in, week out, for Ulster.
Indeed, if it wasn’t for Covid-19 and the subsequent sporting shutdown, he was pencilled in to start the final-round Six Nations clash with France in Paris. Everything changed when sport resumed later in the year. Cooney has been on the periphery ever since. The likes of Gibson-Park and Casey have emerged. Injuries and a few slumps in form played their part, but there is a sense that Cooney never got a fair crack from either Joe Schmidt or Farrell.
The most frustrating thing for this talented half-back is he never seemed to get clarity from Farrell and the Ireland management as to why his face didn’t fit. In July of last year, he gave the impression of a player who was resigned to spending the rest of his career in international purgatory.
‘I probably am deflated. It gets harder each time
and I feel I’ve done enough and
“Everything that’s been asked of me, I’ve done it”
I’ve done everything asked of me,’ Cooney admitted in July 2021. ‘I said last season they called me in to train with them against France (in 2020) in a game that I was meant to start before lockdown and I got all my work done, I encouraged everyone and I trained well. ‘Then I got called in again and did everything they asked of me, so I feel like I can be proud of what I’ve done because everything that’s been asked over me for the last couple of years, I’ve done it. I’ve never complained and I’ve worked incredibly hard — even my club selections, to leave clubs to go up and get a starting role to pursue my dreams of playing for Ireland.
‘It probably wouldn’t be as much of an ambition of mine anymore.’
It remains one of the great selection mysteries of this era. Farrell has played a blinder over the past 12 months during a transformative chapter at the helm of the national team.
But is he missing a trick by ignoring a player with such obvious talents? Having an experienced scrum-half who is also a world-class goal-kicker and can do a job at out-half in an emergency, would be quite handy during a gruelling World Cup campaign in France.
More than likely, Cooney will be watching the global showpiece from the couch next year. As he has stated in the past, all he can control is what he does on the pitch.
‘I want to be as good as I can be and if that’s good for Ireland, it is. If it’s not, it doesn’t really bother me as much anymore,’ he admitted last year.
Interestingly, Ulster’s next assignment is a top-of-the-table meeting with Leinster at Kingspan Stadium on Friday night. Both sides are undefeated in the URC thus far and Gibson-Park could be back in the saddle for the visitors as well. No better stage to make a few points, then.
The Ireland ship may have sailed, but Cooney can still make a big impact at his adopted province, who are on the hunt for a first piece of silverware since 2006. That is one certainty in Cooney’s frustrating career.
away from home, regardless of what’s happened in the Dragons camp this week. ‘I expected better. It was just so poor. ‘We had eight turnovers in the first half and were illdisciplined. We lost lineouts, knocked on and we never got a foothold in the game. ‘We had to address that and be patient. Just before halftime, we sorted that out but in the second half we fell away in all those areas of the game, especially going into their 22. We were just sloppy.’ JJ Hanrahan’s boot did most of the damage, with the former Munster No10 kicking 18 points from the tee, while Rio Dyer’s dazzling late try sealed