Ulster's John Cooney salutes landmark players he has 'gone to the trenches with'

Richie Murphy’s side were last to play in round four of the United Rugby Championship and actually kicked off bottom of the table – but the five match points lifted Ulster up to eighth.

It was a night of milestones in Belfast with Andy Warwick and Alan O’Connor both notching up 200 caps for Ulster while Nick Timoney made his 150th appearance and ‘Man-of-the-Match’ John Cooney achieved a personal first against his former club.

“I realised I hadn’t scored against them before so that’s why I was quite buzzed even though they’re a team I still have a lot of love for and fond memories,” said Cooney. “I think I was buzzing because when you score at the posts it’s always good craic.

“The less I think the better I am, I thought about it...we called a play a couple of phases before when I thought about looking for that space so maybe it was in the back of my head then I looked up and I scored.

“It was good to get five points, it was one of those you forget after you’re just happy to get the win and you remember it’s five points, so it was big and we were chasing that...for us to come out that side and get five is huge.”

The scrum half paid tribute to the trio who reached their caps landmark.

“All the oul fellas trying to carry it now, us young fellas stood up as well,” joked Cooney. “It was really proud, I’ve played with all of them since I came and been part of three-quarters, four-quarters of all those games so I’ve gone to the trenches with them many a time and three of them are players I would do anything for, and I’ve loved playing with...they’re all warriors so it was great to be there.”

Cooney admitted Ulster had to change their game play as the inclement weather kicked in before the game started.

“It was one of those swirling wind tough conditions so a lot of what we’d planned went out the window when you stepped on the field,” said Cooney. “It wasn’t meant to be raining, it was raining; it wasn’t meant to be that windy, it was windy...so it was going to what was working for us and the aerial battle it was working well for us so you kind of double down...we mauled well.”

It wasn’t a perfect performance from Ulster and Cooney was disappointed that Connacht went back to Galway with two match points. “We scored, knocked it on and they get a kick to get a bonus point so that’s again, we’re up by eight we can’t really be giving away cheap points like that,” said Cooney. “They take a point and you never know what’s going to happen at the end of the season, hopefully, we don’t do that again. “Maybe I’m too honest but I found it frustrating out there as an older player. “We’ve got to learn, we need to learn quicker...this is a tough league and if we’re going to finish top eight I think we need to realise, as they will (younger players), that mistakes in big games can matter really bad.”