NIALL QUINN'S recovery from his knee injury is progressing ahead of schedule.

Just three weeks after undergoing an operation for the repair of a damaged cruciate ligament, the Sunderland player is now hoping to return for the club's Easter. programme.

That is significantly shorter than the timescale involved in his recuperation from similar surgery three years ago when he missed the last seven months of Manchester City's season.

He is working up to six hours a day on muscle strengthening exercises, a routine which begins each morning in the gymnasium at the University of Sunderland, continues at Roker Park and ends at a local swimming pool.

"By normal footballing standards, it's a huge workload but the stakes are so high that I really don't have an option if I'm to make it back by Easter," he said.

"Having been through this operation before, I was better prepared mentally to deal with the problems which follow but the biggest difference is that there were no complications this time.

"On the first occasion, I contracted a blood disorder which kept me on my back for six or eight weeks and the muscle wastage in that time was considerable.

"Now the loss has been minimal and by working so hard at this stage, I aim to be ready to start: back into serious training when the three months needed for the knee itself to heal are up."

This type of injury is one of the most feared in football but Quinn says that he never shared the view that his career was in jeopardy after damaging his knee in the game against Coventry City in September.

If I'm honest, I have to say that the thought ran through mind when I wrecked my other knee in 1993. At the time, a torn cruciate meant big trouble and the case histories of players like Paul Gascoigne, John Salako and my own clubmate at Maine Road, Paul Lake, who never played again, were trotted out to support it.

"Only Alan Shearer had made a reasonably quick recovery and I knew that I didn't possess his kind of body strength.

"But the medical advances in three years have been considerable and with no complications setting in after the second operation, I know that I can get back much quicker this time."

To expedite his recuperation, the Dubliner who manages a racing syndicate of more than 6C owners from his home outside Sunderland, has gone back to one of his abiding interests in sport.

Cois na Tine, the horse which gave him his first big successes in racing, is now back in England after a spell in America. But the chances of the five year old turning to hurdling are, according to the owner, negligible.

Yet with 11 newly bought in yearlings, two of them from America the syndicate, which has already won six races this year, is making a heavy investment in the future.

By that stage, Quinn hopes to have refloated his football career successfully and eke out at least another two seasons before moving back to Dublin.

Even by his own ambitious estimates, he will not be available for selection for the next World Cup game in Macedonia on April 2nd." But depending on luck and his singular sense of dedication, he could be back and buzzing for the crucial fixture in Romania four weeks later.

. Albania have vowed to get their national side reinstated in the World Cup after their suspension by world soccer's governing body FIFA.