Cooper played rugby league for Western Suburbs Magpies and North Sydney Bears and, in 1980, was selected in the New South Wales team for the inaugural game in the State of Origin.

Cooper was named in the Western Suburbs Magpies Team of the Eighties, in the second-row.

[4] In 1982, Cooper was suspended for the equal-longest period in rugby league history, of fifteen months, after he ran in to join a brawl and left three Illawarra Steelers players flattened during a match at Wollongong showground.

[6] In 1984, Cooper returned to the NSW Rugby League with North Sydney but, after only four games, he dislocated his shoulder and retired from football.

This rugby league football biography relating to an Australian born in the 1950s is a stub.