Niall Quinn on the battle for the soul of Irish football

In 2016, the competing success stories of Dundalk and Ireland sharpened divisions about what constitutes our game’s DNA. As the year ends, Niall Quinn accepts an invitation to wade into the debate with Liam Mackey.

Even as 2016 slides into football history, the game is still struggling to make sense of the year’s bumper crop of surprises. And for Irish football legend Niall Quinn, it was actually a legend of the GAA who got closest to the heart of a memorably topsy-turvy 12 months.

“I enjoyed the year thoroughly because I’m an underdog person by nature,” says Quinn. “As a neutral watching something, if there’s an underdog I’ll shout for them. So this year in football, from Leicester to Iceland, Ireland doing what they did, Dundalk going so far in Europe, and even Portugal winning the Euros, it brought a bit of romance back, the natural order got shuffled around a bit and it was great.