A beer emoji and a mystery injury: Dolphins boss addresses Cooper drinking incident

August 12, 2026 — 11:30am

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Irvine: Several days after skipping the final night of swimming at the Commonwealth Games to go out drinking instead of supporting his Australian teammates and attending a mandatory team meeting, Isaac Cooper posted a photo to Instagram with a beer emoji in the caption that raised eyebrows.

“Cheers Glasgow 🍻,” Cooper wrote to his 41,000 Instagram followers. “It was real. Onto the next.”

Within hours, Cooper – who this masthead can reveal split with his coach, Olympian Ash Delaney, on the eve of the Commonwealth Games – had deleted the beer emoji.

Cooper changed the caption from “Cheers Glasgow” to “Peace out Glasgow”.

One user noted in the comments that it was a “wild caption”. Cooper liked that comment.

For an athlete who, only a few weeks earlier, had told this masthead how proud he was to have been appointed to the Dolphins’ leadership group, Cooper’s post spoke volumes.

Australia head coach Rohan Taylor, who declined to be interviewed in the days after this masthead revealed the incident in Glasgow, was asked at a Pan Pacific Championships press conference in Irvine, California, on Tuesday whether he was surprised by Cooper’s social media post featuring a beer emoji.

Taylor offered no opinion. “I don’t have social media, so I didn’t see it,” he said. “I heard about it but I didn’t see it.”

On the day Cooper went missing in Glasgow, having been spotted drinking at the bar at Australian team headquarters, Taylor was furious the 22-year-old backstroker was not at the pool supporting his teammates.

In the days that followed, satirical website The Betoota Advocate published a story under the headline: “God Forbid A Queenslander Goes To A Pub While On Tour”.

Cooper decided to reshare the post on Instagram, not that Taylor would have known.

Swimming great and fellow Queenslander Kaylee McKeown, who did not compete at........

© Brisbane Times