Agree with this. Always frustrates me when players' personalities seem to get in the way of them achieving their full potential.

Best of luck to him

What happened at kr?

Had other problems (ie rumours about his relationship with Morgan and our Aussie Cartel)
I'm not sure when, but his mother became very sick too

The fundamental problem was - his move was massive in terms of RL in Hull.
The way it all happened and the fallout from it, required a big strong character to put all that to one side.
He never did.

He's a ticking time bomb.

A leapord never changes it's spots.

Maybe so, but people can change.

IMO the guy threw his career away. We'll never know what really happened with him and Morgan, but if Cooke had been 100% professional and stuck out Morgan's last 2 seasons I reckon he could still have been here.
No disrespect to Donny but its a real shame a player of his quality is on the scrapheap at 30 when he could still have been knocking on the England door now.

"No disrespect"

Was never good enough for the Aussies or Kiwis. He was selected for England A once, but was in the same team as Radford, Calderwood and Lee Smith so thats not much to go by.

You can read his own thoughts on these issues in the latest edition of the excellent Forty-20 magazine.

Agree if he's got himself sorted and he's going in the right direction then its a happy ending.

With Cooke I'm never sure to be honest what goes on in his head, hopefully I'll be proved wrong though.

Will always remember his try at Cardiff in 2005. Hope he gets his head straight and shows up for Donny.

Makes me laugh people saying he could have been a real star! He won the Challenge Cup along with the rest of the Hull FC boys, while playing in a pivitol position. He is a superb goal kicker and has a brilliant cut out pass ability. Ok he was never going to be the fastest but give him a few yards to work in and he's going to put a player through a gap. He has a rugby brain and knew what needed to be done. Whether or not others around him were prepared to do those things was a different story and I think at HKR he came to a club that was building a squad good enough to compete.

I honestly think the Super League quality out grew Paul, the speed of the game was just too much and that lead to him struggling for a good performance. Morgan was and is not a fan of the long ball either, I know for a fact Paul was told not to throw out that long cut out pass that gave Hull FC so much joy. Without this skill Paul would never have been so good (and Briers wouldn't have as many tries as he does!!) which IMO is why he didn't get on great with Morgan and his career dipped.

While physically I doubt he would ever have been a top athlete, all those hours spent down the pub (at both Hull and Rovers) didn't do him any favours. He would still be playing SL now if his attitude was better.

While he is disliked by the Hull fans for obvious reasons...in 2005/2006 he was incredible for us.

yes a definate engima was Cooke, could be a game winner or could be a bad apple in the barrel. He did great things for FC and terrible things, he did great things for Rovers but left under a cloud, the Lord Voldermot of RL!

Good player (in his day), terrible person.