Not even the lure of the Women’s Super League could drag Louise Quinn away from Championship side Birmingham, where she feels closer to home than at any stage of her time playing abroad.
Ironically, having to be in Dublin to report for international duty saw her miss the most Irish of weekends in the UK’s second city.
Posts from her friends kept her up to date with events at a music festival that featured Sharon Shannon, Finbar Furey and others.
“It was just down the road from me,” she said.
“I was gutted that I missed the festival. Imelda May was playing, and absolute legends like the Dubliners.
“That was Megan’s (Campbell) Granddad’s band (the late Eamonn Campbell). I think there’s only one, Sean (Cannon), that’s still doing it.
“I could see it all on my bloody Instagram. Even the Irish flew over for this and I was ‘agh’. It looked brilliant.
“I know where the Irish Centre is. My partner’s parents are Irish, her name is more Irish than me.
“All of her mates, their Irish parents are off to the west next week and I’m saying ‘You’re in Ireland more than me and you live here’.
“I can’t keep up but there’s a lovely comfort to that.
“You’d hear some of the language too, an English accent with Irish words. It’s lovely.”
This all flowed from a question relating to her decision during the summer to re-sign with relegated Birmingham rather than seek a move straight back to the WSL.
“No, not for me. I just went with what felt right and how I wanted to enjoy football, how you want life as well off the pitch,” she replied.
“Everything was right for me to be staying in Birmingham. No, I love Birmingham.”
The city’s connection with her homeland is so important to the 32-year-old, who has played abroad in Sweden, Italy and England since January 2013.
“For me personally, it’s massive,” she said. “And it is probably the same for all the Irish girls.
“It is about trying to find a bit of a home away from home.
“Obviously in Sweden and Italy, that was a bit more difficult and I struggled there a bit more.
“At Arsenal I was feeling at home and the surroundings as well. But that is football, things happen and contracts end and sometimes, you have to move on.
“But for me, Birmingham has that great mix now of a forty-minute flight home, plenty of Irish around the area, and in the team as well.
“It’s that balance and having that feeling of a home away from home, that comfort.
“It is always something I always wanted in my career, you want to share everything with your closest people as much as you can.
“And we don’t get the money that the men get, where they can pack up and go and bring their family.
“So, you actually have to do your dream job away from your most loved ones, close family and close friends, and then link in with them when you can.
“For me to have that Irish bond in Birmingham is massively important.
“We do well at sticking together and helping each other out when needs be.
“It’s a very different city but I absolutely love it. They’re mad.”
The plan now for Quinn and her teammates, including Ireland pals Jamie Finn, Harriet Scott and Lucy Quinn is to bounce straight back to the WSL.
A more pressing priority, however, is Thursday’s World Cup qualifier against Finland.
A win would guarantee a play-off spot, while a draw or defeat would turn the spotlight on next Tuesday’s Group A closer in Slovakia.
“We’ve got to be realistic,” said Quinn. “They’re a very good team that were in the Euros.
“We know what we faced in Helsinki (when Ireland won 2-1) and we were on top of our game, which we’ll need to be again.
“We’ve to approach the game like any other and be realistic about their quality and what we need to do. We just need to be 100 percent.”
A first ever full-house at Tallaght Stadium will give the Girls in Green a huge boost against the Finns.
But it also shows how expectations are up in the wake of the Helsinki win, the draw in Sweden and 20-0 aggregate demolition of Georgia.
“Yeah, there’s expectations but we all have certain expectations on ourselves,” Quinn insisted.
“It’s the main goal but can’t let it be the be all and end all.
“We understand we’ve to get three points to keep progressing and go the direction we want.
“We have to simplify it and make it as realistic as possible. We’re going in to win, but we are up against a really good team.
“We’ve had these expectations on ourselves from three years ago and coming into this campaign.
“Just break it down to simplify it. We want to win the game and that’s it.
“That’s the expectation of us every time, but we’re not going to put this pressure from everyone else on us.
“For us, it’s still a normal game. It has to be. It’s a World Cup qualifier and important to us.”
Meanwhile, Quinn has hailed manager Vera Pauw as “the bravest women” in the Ireland camp.
She was Pauw’s courageous decision last month to go public with allegations that she was raped and sexually assaulted when she was a player.
Quinn said: “It hasn't surprised me how people reacted to it and have been so supportive.
“It shouldn't have to happen, a person shouldn't have to go through that and hold onto it for so long. It's heartbreaking.
“So to do it in this moment, it will only make her a bigger and better person. She's the bravest woman on our team right now.”
Quinn and her teammates were made aware of Pauw’s decision to go public during the last international window, when the Girls in Green won 9-0 away in Georgia.
“We had an idea, it was building up to it,” she said.
“We had our game, so it was around that. She was being that strong woman, prioritising us again over herself to not get it out in the media in and around the game.
“She knew she had a job to do, we had a job to do, no distractions, and fair play to her, she was able to keep that away from us, and we found out before the statement.
“She knew the support we had for her, it was simple and easy.
“She's a strong woman, she was already strong before that, she's a hard, strong woman and to have to make herself vulnerable, she’s great.”
Quinn added: “It was one of those things that is very difficult to hear from someone you are so close to in a camp.
“But, for me, she was composed, she was brave, she was strong, she is going to help a lot of people.”
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