"After 16 years, you just get used to it"

Niall Quinn has spoken to Hot Press about those tense weeks in Saipan, when both the World Cup and the Roy Keane debacle were in full flow.

He told Hot Press of the intense isolation the Irish side felt leading up to the Cameroon match, wherein rumours had reached the team that Irish fans were going to cheer for Cameroon, in order to register their displeasure that Roy Keane had headed home.

In reality, the story had begun after Today FM broadcaster Eamon Dunphy - not coincidentally the ghostwriter of Keane's autobiography - had urged listeners back in Ireland to support Cameroon, during one of his programmes.

"Because of the time difference," Quinn explained, "by the time that sort of stuff had gone around various hotel rooms, Eamon Dunphy's name was done out of it and all you're hearing is that the people of Ireland are going to support Cameroon. It's scaremongering. There was another report that fans were going to turn their backs and not watch the game. So [we were] 22 lost souls, looking for a bit of inspiration, and we had no idea what was going on.

"When we got a great reception coming out to play Cameroon it was a huge relief."

He also said, of the FAI's "lack of organisational savvy" (as interviewer Barry Glendenning termed it), "After 16 years, you just get used to it."

"Y’know, if we all got as upset by their shortcomings as Roy does," Quinn suggested to Hot Press, "nobody would ever turn up to play for Ireland."

You can read more about FAI and the World Cup experience, as well as about his relationship with Roy Keane these days and his appraisal of the McCarthy demonisation, in the current issue of Hot Press.