SEVENTEEN YEARS ON from his senior debut for St Vincent’s, Tomas Quinn is still focused on getting better.
After missing the opening round of the Dublin SFC, Quinn returned last night as reigning champions St Vincent’s had five points to spare over Na Fianna in the second round.
The attacker, who is 36 this year, made his bow at this level for St Vincent’s in 2000 and has blue and white running through his veins. His father captained the club to the Dublin hurling title in 1982, and Quinn is a product of the St Vincent’s nursery.
In their latest victory, he bagged an early goal and floated in a delightful pass for Diarmuid Connolly to slot home their second three-pointer shortly afterwards. The goals were critical in the Marino club’s victory over a good Na Fianna side.
“I’m just trying to keep getting better, to be honest,” he told The42 after the game.
“I still believe I can improve. You might have to tweak your game, you mightn’t be able to do things I could do when I was 26 but if you’re smart enough you can use the ball and find space and that’s what I try and do.
“The body feels okay. Thankfully I’m injury free and I’m just trying to stay sharp. In fairness we’ve good forwards around so if you make good runs you’re going to get the ball. We back ourselves, we move around and try to create match ups that we like.
“The sharpness was off a little bit and definitely fitness – there’s a chance to work on things over the summer now. It’s one of those things.”
The club championship will resume once Dublin’s interests in the All-Ireland series ends, but there will be plenty of league games played between now and then.
“After this weekend there’s only going to be eight teams left in the Dublin championship. It seems a bit mad. So we knew this was a huge challenge for us, even mentally.
“We’ve beaten Na Fianna the last couple of years and it was probably the toughest draw we could have got, for us to not fall into a trap and thankfully we didn’t. The summer is good because we play league football all through the summer.
“We take the league seriously, we go at the league, we try and get better with the games. We’ll have seven, eight or nine league games now during the summer and lads will get a chance. Hopefully we’ve a chance to get better come championship.
“To be honest we weren’t use to playing this stage at this time of year. You used to play one game and you’d have the summer then and you might come back to the last 16. This is definitely a step up from the first round and it was a challenge for us to be ready in May.”
It was a second game in charge for Brian Mullins, who took over from Tommy Conroy this spring.
“It’s very early days for Brian, for his management team and for us as players dealing with him,” continued Quinn.
“We’ve always been about Vincent’s trying to play football, trying to use the ball as quick as we can, trying to attack with the ball. Nothing has changed with that.
“That’s what this set of players tries to do and that management team are trying to keep things going. We were at a very high level the last couple of years with our previous management and we’re just trying to build on that.
“We’ve a bit of time over the summer to tweak things and see if we can do things better.”
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