John Cooney: Losing his place in the Ireland squad was quite disappointing but he has moved on, says Ulster scrum-half

There was a time when John Cooney struggled with the idea that his days playing for Ireland were over.

Cooney, who made three appearances off the bench in the 2020 Six Nations, looked firmly in Andy Farrell’s plans during the early stages of the Englishman’s reign.

Then the pandemic hit and Test rugby stopped like everything else.

By the time Ireland next took to the pitch, almost eight months later, Leinster’s Jamison Gibson Park had emerged. The Auckland-born scrum-half replaced Cooney on the bench in Ireland’s win over Italy.

Cooney has not played for Ireland since then.

For a while, Cooney couldn’t understand why he was out in the cold. But now he says he has come to terms with the unusual circumstances that contributed to the end of his Test career.

“To be honest, I was pretty bitter about it for a while,” the 33-year-old told BBC Sport Northern Ireland.

“I always compared myself to the other nine and went into the game based on my stats and performance and thought I should be higher up.

“But that’s the reality. I’ve really enjoyed being here and I’ve always come back to represent Ulster and play the best rugby I can.

“I feel like when I did that and when I stepped away and fully focused here, I played my best rugby and probably became more of a teammate, a team player.

“I was rooting for Ireland at the World Cup. I might have been a little disappointed in the past, but I was really happy with how they played. Like everyone in this country, I was rooting for Ireland. I was rooting for them wholeheartedly and hoping they would win.”

“After that Scotland game I felt Ireland should have won, so I put that aside. [I’m] Support Ireland again. ”

Cooney made his Test debut against Japan in 2017 and went on to make 11 appearances for Ireland, with his last appearance coming in the defeat to England in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic shutdown.

When thinking about what happened four years ago, Cooney puts it down to “incredibly bad timing” and a fair amount of bad luck.

“You can let it go,” he insists.

“What are the chances of a global pandemic happening and what are the chances of it happening to me? After COVID-19, I really struggled for a while. It was tough when I couldn’t leave the house. .Throughout my career, I have always gotten out of other situations.That side.

“I’ve been through some bad shoulder surgeries and neck injuries and I’ve learned a lot through resilience and I wouldn’t change that at all.

“It made me a human being and it made me represent my family and friends. I think when they look at me, they see me as a resilient person. So that’s important.”

Cooney has opened up that he is gradually coming to terms with being sidelined from the international scene, but declined to say whether he had asked Ireland’s coaching staff to remove him from selection.

“I can’t comment on that,” smiled the Dubliner, who did not rule out switching his international allegiance to Scotland after signing a new contract with Ulster last April.

“I keep it to myself. It’s mentally difficult. Let me just say, I think it’s incredibly difficult. I’m the happiest and I’ve felt the safest. I was here concentrating on this team.”

“That was my goal at the time, and I didn’t want to spend my energy doing anything else.”

For now, Cooney will focus his energies on a crucial period of Ulster’s European tour, with big games against Toulouse and Harlequins coming up over the next two weekends.

Ulster breathed new life into their season last month with wins over Racing, Connacht and Leinster after three successive defeats.

Five-time Champions Cup winners Toulouse visit Belfast on Saturday night, and Cooney could face his opposite number, France captain Antoine Dupont.

Ulster, who have already taken the scalp of the French giants before a rare win away to Leinster, will be confident of avenging their quarter-final loss to Toulouse in April 2022.

When asked the biggest reason for the dramatic turnaround in Ulster’s fortunes in recent times, Cooney said the team’s potential was not being realized after a series of below-average performances against Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bath. He admitted that he was “desperate” to do so.

“We talked about it that week [of the Racing game]” said Cooney, who has been with Ulster since joining from Connacht in 2017.

“We were desperate for a result, and perhaps an effort as well. In some of those games, we didn’t play as well as we could and Racing just fell back into that situation. .”

“If you look at individual effort and the motivation within the team, when you hit a wall and need something, you end up relying on desire and work rate.

“We have a lot of resources at the moment and we overturned some close results and won the last two games by one point. I think that really galvanized the crowd and the team.”