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24th March 2020
06:00pm GMT
TRIMBLE: You must have been thinking, if the Italy game had’ve gone ahead, that would have been a good opportunity for you to get a start. COONEY: Yeah, I’d put that down [on my list], obviously. It is disappointing but a world-wide pandemic, what the hell? You’re not going to expect something like that. It’s a pretty valid reason for a game not to go ahead, so feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to do much, to be honest. TRIMBLE: Is that what Farrell said to you? ‘Listen, I’d love to start you this weekend but there’s a worldwide pandemic’! COONEY: Yeah, basically!
2019/20 was another improvement on a series of steadily arcing seasons for Cooney. He was on fire in the Champions Cup and most weekends either saw him or Marcell Coetzee bag the man-of-the-match accolades.
The Dubliner says it is tough to answer whether the latest Six Nations campaign was more frustrating - especially as many fans and pundits were crying out for him to start for Ireland - but he always tries to take the positives.
"Going back to the way I review and look at things I’ve learned, I was in a much better position to where I was a year before. I felt, the year, before that I had played four of the five Six Nations games but I felt I was nearly getting picked just due to injuries. So I felt, firstly, that I had earned my spot. That made me feel pretty good, from the hard work I’d put in. Secondly, when I saw that or reviewed it, that getting annoyed or getting disappointed wasn’t really going to better me or make me play better off the bench.
"I was disappointed and I obviously wanted to start, but when I looked at it from that point of view, I was pretty happy with where I had gone in a year. And even the disappointment of the summer and not making the World Cup squad… obviously that was a massive low for me. So for me to bounce back and get to where I planned to get to, and made goals to get to, when I was able to view it that way, I was pretty happy with where I got to."
For Cooney, returning to Ulster - and a familiar, supportive community - meant the world to him after his World Cup heartache. "It's a place that I love getting back to," he says.
"In the summer, it was like that again. In a weird way, I was happy to get back to the province that I enjoy playing with, and all my friends. Stuff like that. I think that’s why I came back playing well, or hit the ground running quite early. Because I was in an atmosphere or an environment that I really enjoyed. "When you’re in the international set-up, sometimes it can be a lot of stress, but I told myself after that disappointment that I was just going to be myself, and whatever works for me works for me. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I said I was going to enjoy what I’m doing and that’s basically when you get your best self. "I learned that years ago when I moved to Connacht on loan, and I ended up staying there because I really enjoyed the environment. So that’s what I told myself in the summer. Obviously, those six, seven weeks of Irish camp, I didn’t get to play as much as I (wanted). I think the more I play, the better I play, because I get that continuity. So I was looking forward to getting back."Cooney is now hopeful that Ulster can, in some manner or future date, get to finish the 2019/20 season. When the season was put on ice - due to the Coronavirus pandemic - the northern province was looking set for a Guinness PRO14 playoff place and they had a Champions Cup quarter final date with Toulouse. "We don’t know what’s going to happen," says Cooney. "It doesn’t look likely at the moment but it would be great for us, because in the position we’ve been in all year we’ve been going well. So I was very optimistic with us, in Europe and the PRO14, of how we could do. WATCH THAT HOUSE OF RUGBY EPISODE HERE:
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