BLESSINGTON IS YOUR typical Irish town.
The Main Street is lined with the usual establishments: shops, pubs, eateries, businesses and a church.
Amidst it all, there’s an archway. To its right, a Centra. It was once Quinns, the local newsagents. Owned by her father, Pat, a young girl called Louise used to help out after school or at weekends.
But any free moment she got, she was out under the arch.
“I used to be down in that laneway just kicking a ball off that wall all the time,” Louise, now an Irish centurion preparing for the World Cup, tells The 42.
“I loved going up, working a little bit in the shop, stocking some shelves, and then going out and kicking a ball against the wall for hours and hours and hours.”
Pat poured similar time and efforts into the family shop, often there from six in the morning to 12 at night. His wife and Louise’s mother, Jacinta, was heavily involved too, and also worked in Guinness for a period.
A self-confessed “little Mammy’s girl” who hated when her mother went to work, Louise was one of three children. Sinead and Vivianne were the older sisters, and sport was a common thread in the Quinn household.
Pat played Gaelic football for Blessington and Wicklow, and some social soccer, while Jacinta was big into tennis and athletics. That love for sport filtered down.
Louise did a lot of athletics herself, and played Gaelic football and hockey.
But football was always the number one.
“We were all Liverpool fans,” the towering centre-back smiles. “That was just made to happen; we don’t know why either.” She remembers being at a birthday party aged four and the eldest of the three sisters, Sinead, made sure her hand went up for the latter when the inevitable “Who do you support: United or Liverpool?” question came around.
It’s one of many brilliant stories the Birmingham City captain tells as we sit down over a coffee at the Castleknock Hotel a few weeks out from the World Cup. A skinny flat white is the order of choice, and she’s insistent on eating the biscuit which came with it.
Quinn is typically relaxed and accommodating, content to chat away about everything and anything — but happiest when talking about those closest to her.
The people who shaped her.
Her eyes light up as she speaks about her parents, and their constant support and encouragement.
“They were just unbelievable. They had a lot with the three of us. Dropped us everywhere, brought us to everything.
“Mam, she was never worried about me playing with the lads or anything like that. She was like, ‘People will say things now… don’t mind them, it doesn’t matter.’ It kind of went over my head anyway. She wouldn’t be making a big deal out of it. She’d be like, ‘Don’t mind them now, sure you’re doing great stuff. You’d beat them any day,’ just the simple little bits of encouragement.”
What about from the line during games, so? “You could hear a few little things but it was never all-consuming or too much. It’d be more be more the chat on the way or the way back, especially if Dad was driving me. Going through all his Gaelic football experience.”
Those car chats continue to this day, the nuggets of advice always welcomed. More often than not though, it’s from a distance.
Now 33, Quinn has been based in Birmingham for the past two years. Her sisters have also been overseas recently: Sinead lives in Melbourne, and Viv is in Dublin after separate stints across the Irish Sea.
“We’ve all been travelling everywhere all the time. My poor parents! But they encourage it. They told us to go do it. Any opportunity, they’re like, ‘Yeah, absolutely, go do it.’ They just want us to try everything.”
That said, Pat remains wary of the family group chat amidst this new age of social media. “He’ll email us,” his youngest daughter laughs. “He’ll still send a text but an email as well is very common.
“We’ve been at such a distance, but we’re all very independent as well. You could go a good few days or a week or two without giving a major update. Just talking crap, putting something in from Instagram or a funny video.
“It still feels that we’re so close. We just cherish the little moments.”
There’ll be a big one to savour imminently, when they’re reunited in Australia. “It’s unbelievable,” Quinn smiles when she thinks of all five being together for the first time in years, her World Cup dream (come true) at the heart of it all.
The long, winding journey started in Blessington.
From Blessington Boys and Lakeside FC, to Peamount United and beyond.
St Mary’s National School and Newbridge College. IT Carlow and UCD.
Sweden. England. Italy.
The places that shaped her.
A five-minute walk from that archway, you’ll find Blessington Community College.
It’s there Quinn was taught how to head the ball — an undoubted trademark now — by her Blessington Boys coaches, Vincent Balfe and Eddie Sheeran.
“Do this, try not to close your eyes, you want to use this part of your head… Sure it’s just a bag of air,” they would say.
“Oh, bag of air?!’”
“You just remember them being so kind and fun. Going training was the easiest and best time, you didn’t have to think of anything. They were our coaches but they were our friend’s dads as well.”
Peamount was another key setting through her formative years, Quinn spending just short of a decade at the south Dublin club. She was 12 or 13 when they arrived at the house, gauging her interest — “I just remember it being absolutely crazy: ‘Why is there some team coming looking for me to play for them?’” — and she departed with no shortage of domestic success, Champions League memories and lifelong friendships.
Denis Cummins, Mr Peamount, gets a big shoutout for his incredible dedication and sacrifice, with the Greenogue outfit among those persistently leading the way in Irish women’s football.
But Quinn knew she had to spread her wings in her early twenties.
“I had been in the national team but I wasn’t playing too much,” she explains. “I was in and out, and if I was in, I just still wasn’t playing as much as I would have liked to. I was just so determined that I wanted to play so badly.”
Her roommate on Ireland duty, Fiona O’Sullivan, encouraged a move away from home comforts and a leap into the unknown. O’Sullivan put her in touch with her agent and it all went from there. “I don’t know how long it would have taken me if it wasn’t for Fiona.”
Eskilstuna United of Sweden was a fairly left-field location to pitch up, but Quinn insists it was where she wanted to go.
The presence of a familiar face helped. Scotland’s answer to Quinn, Vaila Barsley — “six foot, giant, ginger and the exact same player — we just hit it off straightaway,” she grins — had previously been a guest player at Peamount and was keen to swap life as an accountant in New York for a return to top-level football. The pair kept in touch and randomly discovered they were both bound for Eskilstuna.
Still, she questioned what she was getting herself in for.
What was that trip to Dublin Airport like? “Painful. Really, really sad.”
Despite the undoubted homesickness, loneliness and culture shock, it soon got better.
Quinn enjoyed three great seasons in Sweden, herself and Barsley leading a tight-knit Eskilstuna team from the second division to Champions League football (Barsely is now the manager) before one of the most successful spells of her club career followed in England.
She was handed a lifeline by Arsenal when Notts County folded and left her without a club not long after joining, linking up with Katie McCabe at the Gunners.
The rising Irish star was six years her junior, but showed Quinn the ropes early on.
McCabe’s presence was huge, “a comfort blanket” of sorts as she found her feet. That said, she had no shortage of doubt in her own mind.
“You could see that massive potential in Katie, you could see why she was at Arsenal. I was just like, ‘I think I’m just the furthest person away from an Arsenal… I’m not an Arsenal player.’ Even when it came up, I was like, ‘No way. I’ll be a laughing stock.’
“Obviously I was confident in myself in some ways, but I was just like, ‘I just can’t. Look at the players who have been playing with Arsenal, how am I going to keep up with that?
“It was a shame that that’s how I felt at the start. It took me a while to do get into it.”
It was a different environment to Peas and Eskilstuna: “a bit disconnected, but maybe that’s what top clubs are like,” she pondered. But Joe Montemurro changed everything, encouraging togetherness and ending their trophy wait.
Quinn left as a WSL champion, happy to have proven herself at that level after all her doubt.
“It took me a while,” she concedes, detailing how she fought tooth and nail for a contract first, and then regular minutes and a starting berth.
“I was just trying to be the best training player. Every day training for me was like a game day. I was 100% all the time, because I was like, ‘This is the only way that I can keep up.’ You’re trying to defend against Viv Miedema, Beth Mead and Jodie Taylor all at once. I was so determined to just to be like my best.
“A lot of training sessions for a while, I used to wear long socks and shin guards. I used to get some slagging off the girls. But I was like, ‘This is a way that you can train fully.’ I was just used to doing it. I got a bit of slagging, but I’d be like, ‘Ah yeah, but you be ready now cause I can come through you.’ Just had to be 100% and my fortune just changed.”
She remembers a specific game against Reading, in which she was given an opportunity of the bench and helped engineer a come-from-behind win. She did the simple things right and settled the game down, praised highly by her team-mates afterwards.
“That was the first time that I was like, ‘All right, I can do this. And then it just went on from there. I used to laugh to Joe about it: ‘I’m just a sponge, give me it all. I don’t care if I’m 28, I need to learn everything.’
“Passing the ball around your own six yard box, I’d be having palpitations. An absolute panic attack. He had to teach me how to do that and be comfortable with it. That was such a success then when I was able to still be the player I am, but adapt to that style of play. I did my best, I have zero regrets. I couldn’t have done any better.”
That’s a common theme through throughout.
Relocating to Italy for the 2021/22 season brought another whirlwind chapter.
Quinn takes a long pause to gather her thoughts when asked about Fiorentina. “That was a great but wild experience. It was just absolute madness.”
The airport feeling went from sad to “cacking it”. It was her first flight after the initial Covid lockdown and she was heading for the worst-hit country in Europe. The WSL had to stop; how was football in Italy still going?
Again, there was a mutual connection in Dutch midfielder Tessel Middag, who Quinn had crossed paths with in England. They met randomly en route, but Middag was straight into the thick of it once they landed, having put time into learning some Italian.
“It was just the same stuff for me: I really struggle with languages and that was a big part of why I was also so worried about going. It was the same in Sweden — really, really struggle. In the last couple of years of school, I didn’t have to do languages, just with a form of dyslexia I have. I stopped the French, kept the Irish on because I just wanted to at least be able to keep going with that. I just really struggle.
“I couldn’t understand anything. At was so hot. So hot. Honestly I’ve never experienced anything like it.
An intense, overwhelming beginning to the new chapter escalated on the training pitch.
“All out of sorts” between the heat, restless sleep, and unfamiliar times for training and dinner, Quinn was finding it all extremely tough. And she reached breaking point on the grass.
“It was the first pre-season where I’ve ever dropped out of a training session. I remember going and I actually could have fallen asleep standing up like. I was standing on the pitch, I could feel myself just getting emotional. I was so out of it.
“You could drink all the water you wanted but you were still dehydrated, it wouldn’t cool you down. I was like, ‘Right, if I keep going here, I’ll get injured.’
“I went over to the coach with tears in my eyes — and I’ve never, ever pulled out of any training session, as hard as it is. But I was exhausted and I had to tell him I had to stop. It was just too much. I was confused by the language. I was so overwhelmed.
“What am I doing?”
After a crazy season in Italy, Quinn returned to a happy hunting ground in England and signed for Birmingham City.
Being named captain shortly after her arrival set the tone, and she has been at the heart of the club for two seasons now — no longer questioning or doubting herself.
After one campaign in the WSL and another in the Championship, she recently extended her stay and will be keen to lead the Blues back to the top-flight.
But full focus is on Ireland and the World Cup dream right now.
In Sydney on Thursday, she’ll walk out in front of 80,000-plus fans for Ireland’s major tournament debut against Australia.
And will be reunited with the people that shaped her.
Well over 10,000 miles away from that archway, fulfilling the lifelong dream of that young girl who helped out in the family shop in Blessington.
