23 years after his Ireland debut against Greece, Barry Quinn reflects on his career.
Paul Fennessy BARRY QUINN vividly recalls the night before he left for England having just turned 16.
“[My parents] were obviously happy for me but they were gutted [deep down]. My ma only told me after, years and years later, that she used to get really upset that I’d left. They didn’t show it in front of me. “There was me and another Irish lad, John Andrews. All the other English lads went home at the weekend to see their families. We were stuck there by ourselves, so that’s when it got a bit lonely.”
“Damien Duff was probably the best player in our age group when I was in schoolboy football. I played in the U15s, U16s with him leading up to that. So I knew Duffer. I remember he obviously got picked to play for the 20s. The circumstances could hardly have been tougher. He was picked to start against Manchester United at Old Trafford. The Red Devils would claim a historic treble at the end of that season.
“Sometimes the manager would throw a little wobbler in now and again to test something — take some players out to see how they react or put players in. At that point, some would have viewed Quinn as a potential eventual successor to Keane in the Irish midfield, and the Corkonian had brief words of encouragement for his younger counterpart after the game.“But I knew straight away, if you get something out of him, you know it’s probably a compliment.
Quinn had gone close to scoring before a challenge from Ilias Poursanidis ended his game “on a sour note,” as The Guardian’s report from the time put it.“I played for probably two to three minutes after. And then obviously, Mick [McCarthy] pulled me off.“It wasn’t broken but I ruptured the ligaments.Quinn still recovered in time to feature in an end-of-season US Tour.
Within the space of three years, the Dubliner had gone from playing in the Premier League to the fourth tier of the English footballing pyramid, departing his boyhood club nearly eight years after signing as a trainee. Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO Barry Quinn gives Damien Duff a haircut during the players' downtime at the 1999 World Youth Championships. Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO / INPHO
A few days short of his 30th birthday, Quinn’s career as a professional footballer was effectively over after Oxford announced he had been released. “I hadn’t played and the manager at the time said: ‘Will you play a couple of little games just to try to get fit down where I live rather than in Brackley.’
“I was friends with Gavin Strachan, so I did a bit of coaching at his coaching school. But because it wasn’t helping me enough financially in terms of what it was, I had to go and get some jobs [outside of football], work and try to get some money in.
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