Simpson Spurred On By Desire To Turn Cooke’s Fortunes Around

Reaching the halfway point of the season, Cooke are hoping to get back to winning ways in the Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Division. Captain Megan Simpson feels they can turn their fortunes around across the next few rounds, aiming for a brighter 2025.

Cooke have always battled well in the Women’s Division, but with relegation back on the agenda this season, it has certainly added more pressure to the teams that currently reside at the lower end of the table.

Lower squad numbers have been an issue for second-from-bottom Cooke, with a squad of 21 players being their biggest matchday panel in the current campaign. Their numbers dropped to 17 on one occasion.

A player that has been engrossed in the Belfast club since her younger days is Simpson. A civil engineer by trade, she has a strong family links with Cooke RFC. Her Dad, Kevin, and grandfather, Terry, both played for Cooke, with Kevin serving as club President a couple of years ago.

Along with that, Megan’s mother, Barbara, and sister Jessica lined out for the Cooke 2nds team, but later hung up their boots. After watching her dad play, she took up mini rugby before later focusing on swimming.

That was until watching the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup finals day at Kingspan Stadium, which gave her the desire to return to rugby and play a team sport again.

From that moment on she has not looked back, and despite having her struggles with injuries, Simpson’s qualities as a front row forward have shone through. Her leadership skills have been recognised with her apppointment as Cooke’s captain this year.

“I’ve basically just grown up around Cooke,” she told IrishRugby.ie. “My dad and his dad previously were both members, and my dad was actually President there a couple of seasons ago. There were stories of me and my sister running along the sidelines when dad was playing rugby.

“I think there’s a story of one of us getting on the pitch by accident and having to be quickly carted off before we got killed! So I did mini rugby with them sort of for a year or two, but then pursued swimming for the next 10 to 15 years.

Then because of the World Cup being held here in 2017, Dad took me to the finals day in Kingspan, and I got hooked on wanting to play a team sport again. So I then swapped and came back to Cooke. That would have been October 2017, going into the 2017/18 season.

“Got playing a bit, got fortunate enough to play a bit of AIL Cup and AIL, and I’d like to believe the results were a little bit better back then as well for us.

“Unfortunately, I got injured, so I’m now, I’d say, coming back into playing how I want to be playing after two or three years out of injury. So in and out of the club most of my life basically.

“It’s challenging obviously (being captain) with the results we have had over the last few seasons and this season, but I am incredibly honored to have been asked to captain, especially with my family connections to the club. It’s been a learning experience but I am very happy to have the girls around to support me.”

Cooke have failed to score in the last four rounds, with two big losses to defending champions UL Bohemian and table toppers Railway Union coming at home. Last season they registered only one win, and have a busy block of fixtures in the New Year to contend with.

Despite winning performances proving elusive for them, the Ulster side have definitely been rejuvenated by new head coach Brian McLaughlin, the former Ulster Men’s head coach and Ireland skills coach.

They operate with a small playing group but a great bond exists between all the players, according to Simpson, and the vastly-experienced McLaughlin has brought a new energy and direction to their training sessions.

“We’ve been really unfortunate with probably just a bit of both of those scenarios with injuries and players leaving, and we’ve had a good group of probably nearly seven girls that have been out with serious long-term injuries. So there’s a little bit of hope for us in terms of post Christmas,” she noted.

“Two of three of those girls will be looking to come back into the squad and make their returns, which is really exciting for us. The core group has been trying to keep playing and keep the team going in their absence. It has been tough, I think, for some people to keep coming back to training and keep the motivation going.

“I think that’s where Brian has been fantastic, in my opinion, in terms of trying to keep training engaging and and keep getting progression. I don’t think there’s been anyone really in the team that hasn’t felt that they’ve improved in some aspect of their game.

“Brian just brings such an energy to training because it is tough on coaches as well getting those kind of results, and I know Brian’s not happy in the slightest with how the results have been going, but he can still come to training and still try and bring an energy.

“I don’t think I’ve met anyone that can motivate you as much to go out onto a pitch, or to put hits in at training and put the minutes in, as Brian.

“I think he’s been very, very influential in trying to change a lot of our attitudes in and around training and just in and around the club, which will hopefully have a knock-on effect here. Probably it’ll be in the second half of this season, going into 2025.”

Simpson continued: “We’re a pretty good tight group of girls. The depth isn’t quite there. We don’t have massive numbers, and as a result, I think that we really buy in for each other.

“You know, there’s a lot of that sort of ownership of, ‘if I don’t go training I know I’m letting down the 20 other girls that are going week in, week out’.

“We do try and have a few socials and stuff like that, getting festive chips in post training this week, just with the time of year. Our management system are big at getting girls motivated to keep coming down. After every match, they’re giving you a call.

“If you’d picked up a bang just to check in on you and see how you are, and they’re very understanding that we all have a lot going on in our lives, and you may have to miss a session here or there.

“I think just giving the players the trust that if you’re free to be at training, you’ll be at training. And if you have a genuine work excuse or something, that’s fine. There won’t be too many questions asked. It’s just a nice mutual respect between everyone.”

Cooke are still taking the positives out of this season. While they have not got the rub of the green in recent weeks with their scores, they have learned a lot from facing the best of the best to help better their own play going forward.

“We’ve chatted about winners get in the habit of winning and, unfortunately, losers can get in the habit of losing games and sort of throwing them away. And I think there’s been a couple of moments in a few games that we can look back on and be like, ‘that’s where we started to lose it’,” conceded the Ulster-capped hooker.

“That’s where we maybe all switched off or let teams sort of run away with games. So we are upset with a few games like Sutts and Galwegians. We were maybe eyeing them up to put in a tighter performance and probably a better game than what we went and gave as an account of ourselves.

“We do look at the Wicklows, the Ballincolligs. It’s tough to go to play away to those places. We know we’ve got Ballincollig in the New Year, so that’ll be another testament of how both teams can try and keep themselves training over Christmas and see how that goes.

“There’s obviously the aspects of it, like it is tough, especially with the publicity getting better around the All-Ireland League. People obviously are now taking notice of those kind of scores.

“You’re going into work and having conversations with people that you normally wouldn’t have. But we’re definitely trying to take the positive aspects of some bits of the game.

“Last weekend (against Railway Union) it was 35-0 at half-time, which we felt was a great, great performance from us. Unfortunately, injuries and just other things sort of came in the way, for the rest of the game.

“We definitely can see we’re looking for the progress of how we’re building as a team over the season, essentially. So, I’d like to believe that you can see that there are improvements in how we’re trying to run our shape and pattern over those sort of tougher game periods.

“It is what’s let us sort of have small chances in games where, hopefully, we can then start turning those chances into actual points on board. It’s definitely an aim to try and win hopefully three or four games, and see where that puts us in the table.”

With their match against Ballincollig that was postponed due to bad weather rescheduled for the opening weekend of the New Year, Cooke will have a lot to ponder going into the Christmas break.

A win that they crave so smuch would certainly lift their spirits, as they have a busy January in store. Following that trip down to Cork, McLaughlin’s charges host Wicklow and Ballincollig, either side of a Dublin date with high-flying Railway.

Cooke’s two meetings with Wicklow last season were closely fought, ending in three-point and 10-point defeats for the Belfast outfit. Saturday’s round 9 duel at Ashtown Lane has a lot riding on it for both teams, and Simpson is targeting some key areas for improvement in both defence and attack.

“Wicklow have been in great form this season, they started really well. I know they ran into a couple of horror games, against those self-dubbed top four, but they’re holding their own, and they really are a good side.

“They aren’t too different from ourselves in terms of when they came into the All-Ireland League. At a higher level, we’re sort of looking at them and seeing what they’re achieving against most other teams and going toe-to-toe with those sort of top few teams as well, and it’s something that we want to do.

“We want to be like them as well. So going down there and putting a performance in will hopefully prove to our girls that we see the likes of Wicklow doing well and that that could be us. There’s no reason why it can’t be us.

“I think we probably held onto the ball the best we did when we played Railway, of those recent games. We were going through multiple phases before giving away a turnover or just carelessly losing it.

“If that’s something we can sharpen up and bring to Wicklow, I think it’d be a much tighter game, and it should be really interesting. Then we have Ballincollig twice in a month. With the way the league’s flipped, that’ll be a really, really exciting time,” she added.

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