John Cooney believes Ulster have right mentality

In the decade since Ulster have made two domestic finals losing both to their Dublin rivals.

There was a feeling that on that day in May 2012 Ulster seemed happy just to be in the final as they succumbed to a 42-12 defeat.

Ulster are now two games away from ending their 16-year trophy drought starting with this afternoon’s URC semi-final against the Stormers in Cape Town. Ulster have the added incentive that victory will mean a final at Kingspan Stadium after the Bulls beat Leinster.

After a spell in Connacht, Cooney arrived at Ulster in 2017 to fill Ruan Pienaar’s scrum half shirt.

Having spent the last five years in Belfast Cooney believes Ulster under Dan McFarland has developed a winning mentality.

“I definitely do (mentality change), people like Al O’Connor no matter what team you are playing he turns up every week and he really wants to hurt people so we have a bit of intensity like that in the pack now,” stated Cooney.

“Then we have the youth that are incredibly up for playing big games, but they also have the desire to win things.

“You have James Hume who is still 23/24 but they understand sport is fickle, we have been around like Bestie (Rory Best) who said ‘don’t let next year be the year let’s try and do it this year.’

“I think they have been around enough squads now to realise that we take this year is the year that we are going to try and win something.”

“I think what we have done in the last few years is always going to come to fruition eventually.

“I keep saying the learnings we have taken from games but we actually have.

“In previous years we probably have come in to review games and say we need to take our learnings and then the next week we probably go out and do similar things again.

“Take the