As Cooney put it, he could have "fallen back into the wilderness" after the Sharks game.

Instead, he plotted his path out of the darkness and it has benefitted player and club, his late penalty sealing Ulster's 23-21 win over Leinster and a place in the United Rugby Championship play-offs.

Cooney, like several of his team-mates, have looked rejuvenated in recent weeks. With Richie Murphy now installed as Dan McFarland's permanent successor, stability has bred better results: Ulster won four games on the spin before falling 29-24 to Munster last week.

Their reward for making the play-offs is another date with Leinster. Ulster have beaten Leinster home and away this season but on Saturday they will face a side driven by the hurt of another heartbreaking Champions Cup final defeat.

Naturally, facing Leinster stirs complicated feelings for Cooney. While he has family connections in Scotland, Connacht and Ulster, he grew up in Dublin and started his career at Leinster.

When his career began to stall, he moved west, where he helped Connacht claim a shock Pro12 title win in 2015-16.

For him, there are similarities between that Connacht team of eight years ago and this current Ulster crop.

"I had a feeling last week that maybe this is us going on our run," says Cooney, who is second in Ulster's all-time points list with 1,116.

"I had it the year we lost to the Stormers [2022] and lost in the last play. That year we should have won it, personally."