Pictured is former Dublin gaelic footballer and Electric Ireland Sigerson Cup winner with DCU DÉ, Jonny Cooper as he looks ahead to Wednesday’s Electric Ireland Sigerson Cup Final between UL and UCC. This year, through its #FirstClassRivals campaign, Electric Ireland celebrated the unexpected alliances formed between county rivals as they come together in pursuit of some of the most coveted titles across Camogie and GAA.
By John Harrington
Jonny Cooper freely admits that no longer being a member of the Dublin senior football panel is “very strange”, but he has no regrets about his decision to retire from inter-county football after playing for 11 years at the highest level.
The seven-time All-Ireland winner knew it was time to step away when he realised he could no longer achieve the 15% level of improvement he always demanded from himself at the start of each season.
“It was a challenge because you know you're leaving; you're leaving the circle and the friendships,” says Cooper.
“You don't get 82,000 on any given Sunday in Croke Park, you don't get that opportunity now.
“But when you look at it in terms of kicking on 15% more, elevating my game and whether or not I can influence, then you ask yourself the question.
“I was lucky enough to be a player and a captain but there are a few different angles to it. I was lucky enough to get to 2022 and kick on. Then there was the clinical and cold answer that I couldn't do it again [this year]; I couldn't get to the level the guys have set.
“For me I can't stand behind something if you can't get to that 15% more that the guys have set, and rightly set, well I'm at ease from that point of view.
“No regrets, zero regrets at all. It was the right decision for a few different reasons."
Jonny Cooper of Dublin celebrates with the Sam Maguire cup and his father Brendan after the 2016 GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final Replay match between Dublin and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin.
Watching from the sidelines this year when the championship comes around will be challenging, but Cooper takes a measure of satisfaction from knowing he extracted the maximum from himself during his time on the panel.
“I didn't get onto the Dublin team for a couple of years, so if I was to go onto it, that's what my thinking was at that time, that I would - whether that was a year, or as it happened to be, 11 years," he says.
“Somebody had said to me last week, of the 11 years, if you went right back to the start and projected, with Covid and all that sort of stuff, how many months you would have available to you, I think it was something like 98 months to when I finished, and the Dublin team that I was involved with got to 96, lost a couple of All-Ireland semi-finals, but got 96 out of those 98 months.
“So, certainly from that point of view, it's a 24/7 gig, and I used to think about it relentlessly.
“I've a small bit of time back now, because I don't have to think about it at all anymore, which is good and bad I think. I certainly gave it what I had every year.”
When Cooper looks back on his career, he admits the major watershed moment came in 2014 when he was the victim of an unprovoked assault on a night out that saw him suffer multiple stab wounds.
“The key learning was off the pitch in 2014 and the attack,” he said. “I was millimetres from it all being gone and finished. That was a big turning point for me. It was an experience that I tried to take forward, both on and off the pitch in 2015 and up until recently.
“I was out the night we lost to Donegal and I felt my preparation for the game was quite poor on reflection. I was playing centre back and it was one of the reasons why they scored [those goals].
“You keep root-causing it; a lot of learnings from a preparation point of view. At that point I was being carried as opposed to showing, pointing and influencing the direction. On reflection I would have put key performance and preparation blocks to build on from that moment.”
Jonny Cooper in action for Na Fianna against Kilmacud Crokes in the 2022 Dublin SFC Final.
Cooper hopes that by the end of his career he had done enough to gain the respect of all the team-mates he shared a dressing-room with.
“I think I had a big challenge with being liked and being respected,” he says. “I wanted both in the early years, in the first half of my career.
“Halfway through it changed to being respected for everything I did. I hope I endeavoured to earn that respect in everything I did from all my former team-mates, coaches and managers.
“Whatever time and commitment I gave I got it back a thousand times over. I'm cognisant of that as well.”
His inter-county career might be over, but Cooper hopes he still has plenty more to give to his club Na Fianna who narrowly lost the 2022 Dublin SFC Final to the Kilmacud Crokes team that went on to win the All-Ireland Final.
“I'm really looking forward to it as I've never done a full pre-season with the club,” he says. “It's unbelievably exciting at the moment. The team doesn't realise the potential they have.
“You can argue that there is 30% more in the team as a whole and I'm really looking forward to supporting that journey, challenging where I can.
“I will hope to bring as much experience, both from a professional point of view in terms of my day job, but also from the last 11 or so years with Dublin.”
