ISSUE 3 Ireland v Switzerland Wed 12th October 2005

WE ALL remember the billboards with Cantona’s face and Napoleonic stance with the clever slogan ‘1966 was a great year for English football, 1966 was the year Cantona was born.’ 1966 was the year Niall Quinn was born. How would the ad go? With his big grin ‘1966 Brilliant, just delighted I was born actually. Or maybe ‘1966 was a great year for Irish comedy, 1966 was the year Niall Quinn was born.’ You could throw in a leprechaun hat and hey presto a great billboard campaign.

Throughout his long Irish soccer shelf-life Niall Quinn has occupied a strange place in the hearts of the Irish supporter. We have watched and groaned with hands in front of our eyes, Just waiting for the next calamity to befall the seemingly hapless Quinn. We were fixated and we watched curiously as it all got too much for big Quinn. When Quinn first arrived in Arsenal in the early 80s we still suffered from ‘an inferiority complex’. Yes we had plenty of quality Irish players and Dave O’Leary, Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton were excellent servants to Arsenal during their time at the club. But we couldn’t help but flinch anytime Quinn stumbled, fumbled, fell, tripped, trod, squandered and fell again.

The mighty Quinn always got back on his feet, we felt the embarrassment as if he were a brother, we could not look to the other quality Irish players we had. Instead we’d harshly twist a thumb Quinn’s way and say ‘Yeah, but what about Quinn’ argument over or so it wOuld seem. It’s a credit to Quinn he made it as far he did and for as long as he did. And when you consider the plight of his two former teammates Tony Adams and Paul Merson -both of whom were constant drinking companions of Quinn’s. So much so that part of Merson’s rehabilitation was not to even make any contact with Quinn. Even stranger as Quinn who was at Man City at the time and had not spoken with Merson for a long time, obviously he left a lasting impression.

We all waited and expected it all to go pear shaped so that we could fold our arms and nod our heads, as we always knew it was coming. But it wasn’t vindictive it was never tribal, after all he was a part of the team, our team. It’s probably down to Quinn’s own unflappable spirit and ‘ah sure things could be worse’ attitude that he survived ‘the game’. However hard we laughed he would laugh harder and longer. He just kept going and we kept waiting. But then a strange thing happened along the way. The Ireland of old was b r e a k i n g away from it’s recent past, it was the midnineties and we were starting to shake off some of our ‘inferiority complexes’ or some other shite like that.

Quinn was too, after years of biting on our fists Quinn went to Sunderland in 1996 and had a renaissance in his career and played the best football for club and country for the best part of six years. I KNOW in his formative years he scored some really important goals the equaliser against Holland in Italia ’90, another equaliser against England in Wembley for a European qualifier. I know there were spells where he hit a rich vein of scoring and performing at Man City. But there was never any real consistency.

But consistency is what we got and the comic begrudgery turned to respect. We were glad The Mighty Quinn was lining out in green. We finally respected his first touch and his close control (something we never gave him credit for). He was always good in the air we always gave him that. We nicknamed him Quinnaldo, praise from Caesar himself. He became our all time top scorer somewhere along the line and we had qualified for the World Cup 2002.

This was his swansong, his chance to say goodbye on a high, and a vindication of sorts. But Quinny wouldn’t be Quinny without one last calamity to stir up the old memories and make us chuckle at it all. SAIPAN, undid all those years of hard work all that grudging respect built up to just flutter away like a fiver to the wind. But for once it was his offfield antics over those two days that brought it all crashing down upon him. For his on field antics as the supersub roll, he played with aplomb. He set-up Robbie Keane’s goal against Germany and the penalty he earned against Spain too was vital.

Saipan was unfortunate for Quinn as it was not his mess, but it became a mess in which he became more and more embroiled to it’s shambolic conclusion. It’s to Saipan I wonder when I think of Quinn at the World Cup whose actions, was that of the Clouseau waiter who stumbled from one disaster to another. We watched the frying pan land on his head with the initial interview with Stan and Alan Kelly. We flinched at the banana skin slip as the behind the scenes moves to get Keane back, backfired. To the backing of Mick to the player’s group statement that they didn’t want Roy back.

A farce indeed. We didn’t laugh then, oh no, it has taken I Keano the play to put it all in perspective for us. Every time I see Quinn appear on Sky sports or elsewhere, I can only picture his I Keano character Quinness, hands on hip with a misplaced lets all work this out attitude. A caricature I know but one we can relate to more easily. The old sneaky grin returns a knowing nod is exchanged same old Quinny, same old story, but we love it!

Niall, for all the fond memories and of course goals, through the good and the bad, as a player and a man, we salute you.

words: Liam Murray