Quinn says players have to ‘run through a wall’ for Ireland
was at Sunderland, the club he supported as a boy, where Martin O’Neill answered an SOS call to become manager in December, 2011.
Niall Quinn had just stepped down as chairman but was still with the club as director of international development and witnessed first-hand how O’Neill improved ordinary players.
‘When Martin came into Sunderland, we were on our knees, in the bottom three coming up to Christmas,’ recalled Quinn.
‘By March, we were in the top eight. He got this momentum going and this belief amongst players who were shell-shocked up to his arrival.
‘He brought one player in during the January window – a full-back on loan – and he turned it around.’
Scroll forward to today and O’Neill is tasked with doing a similar job with an Irish team in transition.
Ahead of the Nations League opener in Wales on Thursday week, O’Neill names his first competitive squad in nine months tomorrow and it will be unrecognisable from his last one.
John O’Shea, Wes Hoolahan and Daryl Murphy have retired, Aiden McGeady is surplus to requirements, while Robbie Brady and James McCarthy are injured.
With Glen Whelan and Stephen Ward pushing deeper into their 30s, and only a handful of players as Premier League regulars, this is a squad in development, and one which still carries the scabs of the 5-1 loss to Denmark.
So, is O’Neill the right man to breathe life into a team the way he did at Sunderland in 2011-12? Quinn, who was as critical as anyone after the Denmark implosion, believes he is.
‘Martin can drive the belief into the team,’ said the 92-times capped international.
‘I know of his strengths. I’ve seen it first hand.’
What are those strengths? ‘Motivation, and managing players to get more out of themselves.’
‘I was one of the ones who had a go at him tactically against Denmark, particularly at halftime,’ admitted Quinn.
‘I suppose the gamble was on, particularly at that point, and we were at the roulette wheel. He went black, I’d have gone red, but there you go.
‘Looking back, going 1-0 up was probably the worst thing that could have happened that night against Denmark. It put everything out of sync in some ways,’ added the former Ireland centre forward.
‘The shackles came off when perhaps we should have kept them on. But, in general terms, to go and get the results he did, to work this team through to give them the opportunity to get that close to the World Cup, was a commendable effort.
‘I don’t think we should judge him on one decision at half-time during a game like that. I think we should judge him on the tournament before and his known ability to bring players on, as he did at Leiciester.
‘If he can just get one or two of the young lads to stand out from the crowd, and he’s good at that, then the team will benefit,’ he added.
‘I’d love to see momentum start to build again and in the first few matches we play it looks as if another era is about to happen.
‘I’m hoping that in six-to-eight months three or four players have come onto the scene and gotten us excited.’
Quinn believes the players themselves need to push each other on, to strive, to succeed as he did from his debut as a rookie international in 1986.
‘I hope there are players who are hungry enough to go in and make a difference.If you are a young player in Martin’s squad now you have to ask yourself: “Are you happy to be there?”.
‘Or do you say, “I’m going to look at records of people who were there before me and I am not just going to emulate them, I am going to go further”.
‘If you had told me at 18 that I’d be playing for Ireland at 19 and-a-half, with great players like Liam Brady, I’d have laughed at you. But it happened. I believed and somebody at the front was making me believe.
‘Jack Charlton has many detractors from the style of football we played, but if he asked me to run through the brick wall in the dressing room, I’d have gone through it.
‘That, perhaps, is what we have to see from newer players coming in.’