World Cup exit pains Quinn

Former Ireland soccer star Niall Quinn has admitted he still blames himself for Ireland’s elimination from the 2002 World Cup.

The boys in green exceeded expectations — following Roy Keane’s early dismissal from the squad after a row with manager Mick McCarthy — by qualifying from their group to win a place in the knockout stages of the tournament in Japan and South Korea.

A nail-biting clash against Spain in the last 16, which ended in a 1-1 draw after extra-time, was then decided by penalties.

Spain narrowly won the shoot-out by a margin of 3-2 after five penalties were taken by both sides.

But Quinn, who was a senior player and Ireland’s leading goalscorer at the time, admits he still feels angry with himself for not taking a spot-kick, which had he scored might have sent Ireland through to the quarter-finals.

The former Arsenal, Manchester City and Sunderland striker said: “I was down to take the sixth, but being a senior player I should’ve taken responsibility and pushed one of the young lads aside.”

The Dublin-born sporting hero, who was a talented hurler and Gaelic footballer in his youth, also said he would never have made it in soccer had it not been for a postal strike in Australia.

Before he was offered a contract by Arsenal when he was 17, he was head-hunted by two Aussie Rules teams — and he said the only reason he didn’t move Down Under was because of a postal delay.

In an interview with soccer magazine FourFourTwo, he recalled: “If it wasn’t for football I’d be playing Aussie Rules. In the summer of 1983 I did a six-week Aussie Rules tour and was offered two contracts — one from Sydney Swans, the other from Melbourne — but they didn’t reach me because of a postal strike in Australia.

“In the middle of it all, Arsenal offered me a trial and gave me a three-year deal. Then mum rang to say a guy called Greg Miller from Sydney had turned up at the door with an Aussie Rules contract for me to sign. Seeing the tackles over there, I thought I might just have been better off at Arsenal.”

Quinn, 47, also told how the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 changed his perspective on the game.

He said: “My lowest moment was trying to find out if a friend had been killed at Hillsborough. I’d got tickets for him and a mate for the FA Cup semi-final and came home to find out what had happened. I was shaking, watching it all on the TV. Thankfully they were okay.”

He added: “It took a long time to get over my retirement and I contracted septicaemia after a knee operation — I lost so much weight, my trousers fell to my ankles — but Hillsborough was the day we realised football was just a game.”