Cooper debut is etched on Leonard's memory
'Cooper looking to hit the ground running' ran the headline.
Eddie Tatler O'Sullivan had rung the Gooch earlier that week to tell him that he would be making his senior debut that weekend in the division two league final against Laois. Fate had decreed that Pauric Leonard would be the man to mark him.
Twenty-one years old at the time, Leonard's inter-county career was still in its infancy. That game would prove to be his last start for his county.
Cooper didn't just hit the ground running, he hit it like a bullet; one Leonard and Laois never saw coming.
It took Leonard and everyone else in the Gaelic Grounds that day about four minutes to realise just what they were dealing with. The usual tardy element was still filing in through the turnstiles when he got his first touch of the ball. By the time he got rid of it, everyone watching knew that this kid really was a bit special.
"He came in along the end line," Leonard recalls now. "The two of us went out after the ball almost to the sideline. I slipped. He got away. He went around two of our lads after that - Tom Kelly and Paul McDonald - and banged it past Fergal Byron in goal. It was a sure sign of how confident he obviously was to get it in at the near post. It happened in a flash."
Four minutes. All it took to launch one man's career and effectively terminate another's.
Leonard held Gooch to just two points for the next 66 minutes, but the damage was already done. That first blow had been a mortal one to his inter-county hopes.
By the time Laois played Wicklow in the Leinster Championship a week later, he had been relegated to the bench where he would stay for the rest of the summer, a late cameo in the qualifiers against Clare aside.
He sat in the stands 12 months later when Laois won the provincial title, his inter-county career cut off before its prime by a combination of a new job in Limerick and that day in the Gaelic Grounds. Knowing what we do now of Cooper, it seems a terribly heavy price for any man to pay. Leonard's CV had all the right boxes ticked. Related on his mother's side to the great 'Boy Wonder' Tommy Murphy, both his Dad Matty and uncle Ollie Brennan had represented the county as well.
A panellist on the 1997 All-Ireland -winning minor team, Pauric was called up to the seniors in 2001 as a 19-year-old and quickly began to make his mark under manager Colm Browne.
Paddy Bradley was kept to a point in the All-Ireland qualifiers that summer and Ollie Murphy came off the worst against him in a league match early in 2002. The week before his fateful appointment with the Gooch he had shadowed Stephen McDonald so effectively that the Killeavy man was called ashore early by Joe Kernan.
If he's any way bitter though, he's one hell of an actor.
"You couldn't blame the selectors," he insists. "We lost the game by four points and my man scored five. You couldn't say anything to them for doing what they did. When you beat Wicklow and the lads play well you can't drop anybody. At the time, like everyone, I wanted to play in all the matches, but I could understand it as well."
Although he admits that 10% of him couldn't help thinking 'what if ... ' when Ian Fitzgerald raised the cup that day in Croke Park, he doesn't dwell on the memory.
"You have to take the rough with the smooth," he states philosophically.
His friends still give him the odd slagging whenever they see Gooch on TV, but when he thinks what Cooper has done since, he doesn't feel so bad about that fateful day.
The irony is that Leonard appeared to have got a cushy number that day. Pat O'Shea, who had known Cooper since he first kicked a ball with Dr Crokes, said: "One of the areas of concern at that time was whether he (Cooper) would be able to physically compete at senior inter-county level."
"He got the goal early on, with practically his first touch of the game, and he never looked back."
Fergal Byron recalls the reaction to Cooper's debut. "There was a lot of talk in the media, that this guy was the man to replace Maurice Fitzgerald and how right they were. The way he's been playing is incredible and he's nearly un-markable at this stage."
Pauric Leonard and a horde of other corner-backs around the country would no doubt agree.
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