Quinn rallies troops for final fling

He may be overshadowed by the enthusiasm of his namesake Alan in the post-match sing songs around the hotel pool, but on the pitch there are few in this Irish panel who, over the past 12 months, have come close to matching the contribution of team captain Barry Quinn.

Still only on the margins of the first team picture at Coventry, where he plays his club football, the 19-year-old Dubliner has long since been a central figure in the Irish underage set up where, with good technical skills, a strong physical presence and powered, as they say, by a great engine, he has been a key central midfield figure. Tuesday night's game against England was his 23rd cap at this level, an Irish record, and though he has scored just one goal over the course of the last year, he was the most consistent performer in a side which, prior to that defeat, had gone 10 matches unbeaten.

Now the teenager finds himself in unfamiliar territory, trying to boost the morale of his team-mates after a defeat. It's not, he admits, the easiest of tasks, but then, he says, for once the rapid-fire nature of these week-long championships are a help. And anyway, this team had grown used enough to winning to find defeat all the more distasteful.

"A lot of the players are tired with the games coming so quickly, but after last night it's a bit of an advantage because you don't really have time to think about what happened, everybody just has to get on with preparing for the next one," he says.

England, he maintains, are still far from certainties to make Sunday's final, and so the team are still thinking in terms of winning here this week, even if, they know now, the Irish must look to a team they destroyed for a favour.

"It didn't go well for us against England and everybody was very upset afterwards. Some of the players were saying that it was the worst they'd ever felt after a game. It's amazing. We were all on such a high on Sunday night and then to be so low two days later. "But today, I think everyone's a lot better. The Croatians are a far bigger team than us and maybe they'll cope a lot better with the English game than we did."

He added: "That's not to say that we didn't cope well, but their size did cause us problems in the first half, and with a big defence and three big lads up front it might not be so hard for the Croatians."

Whatever happens between the group's other two teams, Quinn knows that the Irish must beat the Cypriots to keep their hopes of making the final alive, and that, he reckons, is just what the team needs now.

"The loss might have been a bit heartbreaking, but now we know that it's still all there to play for and that's what counts. We have a day or two to get our heads together and then we'll know what we have to do, and that it's not over yet."