Quinn keeping foot on the gas

Stephen Quinn admits he was pinching himself when, in short order, his unfancied Hull City side found themselves two goals to the good against Arsenal in last Saturday’s FA Cup final.

“I think was thinking, ‘Blow it up! Blow it up! Call it off now and we could lift the trophy’,” says the affable Dubliner. “Being that close, for the rest of your life you’d be thinking we were the nearly men against Arsenal.

“There is no shame in getting beaten by Arsenal but it’s a bit gutting going two goals up and then losing it in extra time. It’s heartbreaking.

“But I think we put on a good spectacle. We didn’t make a show of ourselves. And the most important thing is that we stayed in the Premier League. That was the real aim of the season for us.”

It was also a bonus for the midfielder that he’d forced his way into the team in time for the Cup final, his goal as a substitute against his old side, Sheffield United, in the semi-final helping to put Hull through to the decider.

“I struggled a bit with my hamstring and I had to pull out of a couple of Ireland squads earlier in the season,” he explains.

“After playing in the Championship in the promotion season, it was disappointing that I kept tearing my hamstring. But I got over that towards the end of the season, I got in the team and, luckily for me, that got my name on the team sheet (for the FA Cup final).”

Similarly, having once feared a senior Irish career would pass him by, the three-times capped 28-year-old is now keen to make up for lost time in the green shirt.

“Most definitely. I almost never got a look in under Trapattoni. I just got in towards the end of his reign. I was pushing hard, trying to get into the press to see if I could get my name mentioned. It didn’t happen but I got in towards the end. Now it’s under new management and I’m looking forward to it.”

For Quinn then, the mood in the Irish camp around these the summer friendlies, beginning with tomorrow’s game against Turkey, is far removed from the usual end of season scene.

“It’s very different,” he says. “We can’t take our foot off the gas. As the manager and Roy touched on, training is not lackadaisical, it’s not end of season stuff. It’s great we have this amount of time together. We’re all looking forward to it — there are places up for grabs.”

Anthony Pilkington is another player anxious to stake a claim, having had his previous attempts at launching his Irish career stymied by recurring knee injury. The Norwich man sat out training yesterday, in keeping with a programme of managing the tendonitis problem which he hopes will mean he’s fit for more games for his club and able to add to his three caps for his country.

When it was put to him yesterday that Irish fans haven’t really seen the best of him yet, he replied: “You haven’t seen any of me really. One start, you’ve not seen anything.”

Hence the importance for him too of the games in Dublin, London, Philadelphia and New Jersey.

“Yeah massively,” he says. “I haven’t played for a long time towards the end of the season so I’m hoping I can get some important games now going into the qualifiers, going into next season.”