IT’S NOT BEEN the ideal season for John Cooney as he’s dealt with injuries, a dip in form as a result of those lay-offs, and also the rise of Nathan Doak within the Ulster set-up that has taken game time away from him.
But, in a twisted sense of irony, all of that could have worked out in his favour in the long run as he looks to lead his adopted province to the United Rugby Championship final when they take on the DHL Stormers in Cape Town this afternoon (2pm).
“I had a neck injury at the start of the season, came back and got injured in the first game of the season, came back and started playing really well and then got injured again, so I never had the continuity that I’ve had in previous seasons,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I felt I was peaking after Clermont, I was hitting all my PBs in running and I was in the best shape I’d been, and then I got injured again.”
As Cooney outlines, having shaken off the neck injury inflicted on him by the swinging arm of Nemani Nadolo in last season’s Challenge Cup semi-final defeat to Leicester Tigers, months of eager waiting to get back on the pitch lasted just half-an-hour of their opening game against Glasgow when he sustained a hamstring injury.
The 32-year-old returned for that memorable win at the RDS Arena against Leinster in November but, after leading the team to another big away win in Clermont, once again a calf injury intervened against Munster in January.
The net result of all those injuries is that he has missed nine games this season, all the while having to listen to the growing noise that young phenom Doak was in good enough form to displace him even when he returned to fitness in March.
And yet it was Cooney back in the nine jersey for the Champions Cup last-16 ties with Toulouse, and then charged with steering the ship against Munster in the URC quarter-finals last week, and he rewarded Dan McFarland’s faith with a sparkling performance.
“I feel like I’m peaking again, I’m hitting good numbers in games and I feel like I’m peaking at the right time of the season,” he smiles.
“I feel like I can run all game and as a scrum-half that’s how you want to feel, so I think that timing’s been good for me coming into this knockout rugby, whereas in previous seasons when I haven’t had those injuries I’ve been a little bit more fatigued at this time of year. But I feel like physically I’m peaking now.”
That win over Munster was also special as it marked his 100th appearance for the province, a significant milestone given he has spent the bulk of his development years in Leinster and then a lengthy spell in Connacht as well – not that Cooney is complaining about how he got to this point.
“As a young player, it definitely would have been a goal to reach 100 caps and I’m glad it was here. Everything when I was 18 in my head would have been slightly different, but the way it’s gone and the road I’ve travelled – I always talk about ‘The Road Less Travelled’ being one of my favourite poems – I don’t think I would have done it any differently,” he insists.
“For my family and people close to me, it means a lot to them to see how my career has progressed and how I’ve ended up. It’d be a bit easier if it happened sooner, but it’s a reflection of the hard work of not just myself but the people around me.”
It was also a reflection on how far this Ulster squad have come since Cooney arrived at Kingspan Stadium in 2017 when they were reeling from off-field court cases, quite a long way adrift of Leinster and Munster in the Irish pecking order and battling to just secure a Champions Cup place let alone reach the play-offs.
In stark contrast, last week’s almost dismissive swatting aside of Munster in their URC quarter-final reflected an outfit that are playing with confidence and believe themselves capable of finally ending a wait for silverware that stretches back to 2006 as they enter into today’s semi-final looking to reach their second final in three years.
The Stormers will be a different animal to Munster, particularly with Ulster trying to shake off a day-and-a-half of cross-hemisphere travel, but the province know they have the South Africans’ number after March’s controversial TMO decision robbed them of a deserved win, while they also have years of knockout experience banked for just this kind of moment.
“My first year we played a knockout game against the Ospreys just to get into Europe, so now it’s good to see us playing in a semi-final. First and foremost that’s a reflection of how far we have come,” believes Cooney.
“How the young lads have come through… like Stewart Moore, if you had told him at the start of the season he would be starting at full-back in the quarter-final of the URC, I don’t think he’d have believed you. But he scored two tries and is incredible.
“It’s a good mix between youth and experience, and even off the bench we have guys like Doaky as well, so it’s incredible the squad we’ve built over the last couple of years.
“Last year we had a very good chance in the Leicester away game and we didn’t finish off that game. It’s quite cliched but we did learn a lot from that because it was such a dark week coming in to review the game after that.
“Coming into this knockout rugby, we know how quickly it can change. It’s a big year for us and with the squad we have, it’s one of the best teams we’ve had since I’ve been here. Hopefully we can go on and win a trophy.”
