Cooney has no confusion despite his close call
HAD things panned out slightly differently, then John Cooney could easily have ended up a Scotland internationalist, but the Ulster No.9 says there is absolutely no danger of divided loyalties in this afternoon’s Guinness PRO14 play-off semi-final clash against Edinburgh at Murrayfield.
His father – also John – is a prominent Irish religious affairs journalist, who is originally from South Lanarkshire, and the connection did prompt an approach from Murrayfield a few years back, but, ultimately, nothing came of it.
“He [his father] was born in Blantyre, he went to college at the University of Glasgow and lived all his life there, before he met my mum in Brussels and came to Ireland to work with the Irish Times as a journalist,” explains the 30-year-old. “A lot of my relatives live in Glasgow. My uncle Paul Cooney used to work with Celtic and did Radio Clyde so I have a big connection with Glasgow.
“After I played in the Heineken Cup Final for Leinster [in 2012], I got a call from Scott Johnson. I’d heard about people getting prank phone calls so for the first few minutes I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. He was only interim coach at the time and I didn’t see any point declaring for Scotland when there was an interim coach who might not be there in the long term.
“I had only turned 22 and I had a chance to get a lot more game time with Leinster and push on with Ireland, so at the time I did not think it was the right decision, but it definitely crossed my mind again a couple of years ago. If I didn’t get that cap on the tour of Japan [in 2017] it is something I probably would have gone down the route of.”
Born and raised in Dublin, Cooney initially came of age in the pro game with Leinster but struggled for game time with the province before switching to Connacht for two seasons in 2015, and ultimately ending up at Ulster two years after that, where he feels he has found a place where he really belongs.
“It has become my home and a place where I see myself living far into the future,” he says. “For me, to win this with my province would be huge.
“I have a massive gap on my wall where I will hang any medal that I win with Ulster along with my jersey. I would really love to do it this year. We have worked so hard over the past couple of years and our backs have been against the wall at times, so it would feel even sweeter to come through that and come together as a collective and win silverware in a province that deserves it. After waiting for so many years, to win silverware again would be incredible.”