PAUL QUINN INTERVIEW | (taken from RedMatchday Magazine Motherwell)

You’d get few arguments – certainly in and around Pittodrie – if you were to call Paul Quinn “the defender’s defender”. Not one for trying to catch the eye or do anything flash, Quinn puts his body on the line game after game, summing up the “they shall not pass” attitude of some of the best defenders in the game. So much so that in a recent interview, Adam Rooney likened him to John Terry.

“I think it just comes down to an attitude thing,” says Quinn. “If I can get any kind of block on the ball, I will throw myself in the way. It shows I am wanting to win and shows my desire and all the old cliché words and phrases that are used in football.

“More importantly though it can lift the players round about you, as well as the fans. The supporters travel hundreds of miles for each away game in their thousands. If you were to take any one of those supporters and put them on the 18 yard box and say to them, “We will win this game 1-0 if you throw yourself in front of the ball, you might get hit in the face with the ball”, any one of those fans would do it. So as a player, you need to put yourself in that category. It is about going that extra half yard.

“I was in a relegation battle when I first came through at Motherwell and that was the way it was, so you were scraping for everything or you were going down to Division One and not many youngsters at 17 or 18 then go on and have successful careers after being relegated. So it meant everything to the club, the players and myself.

“Thankfully it never happened and then I landed up playing in a couple of good Motherwell sides.  But from a young age, I was taught about the importance of organisation and the need to throw yourself in where it hurts at times. They are the two things that I have held onto throughout my career and two things that have stood me in good stead.

“We have other lads who do it in a different manner. The way I do it looks old fashioned maybe these days, but we have bundles of players with the same heart and desire.  It is a good quality to have for any challenge you face in life. Give everything you do 100%. Being passionate in football shows that you care. For me football is not about what happens next week or the week after. It is about wanting to win now.

“Although saying all that, I do think Adam got a big excited with the John Terry chat!”

For a man who has made a career out of destroying the game at one end of the pitch, it’s richly ironic that within a couple of months of arriving at Pittodrie, Quinn had etched his name into Aberdeen folklore with his exploits at the other end of the park and that goal against Celtic.

“It was just an unbelievable feeling. It was such a good time to get my first goal for the club because of the circumstances, it being against Celtic and the fact we were down to ten men. It was just incredible. Even thinking back now that of all the players who were on the pitch, the ball landed at my feet and I was the one who had the chance to score the winner. You have to take the credit when it comes along and the praise, as it does not come along that often! I certainly enjoyed the goal. The team deserved to win that day and it will always make it extra special for me because I managed to get the ball over the line”.

The celebrations were memorable too, if only because Paul ended up getting photobombed by Ash Taylor!

“I have had grief for my celebrations throughout my career! I did not know what to do! Adam and Goodie get to practice their celebrations on a regular basis but when it happens once in every hundred appearances, you kind of forget what to do! I also got caught up in the moment and I just wanted to celebrate with the Aberdeen fans. They were going mental. It was brilliant!

“The photo is great. Seeing the joy on everyone’s face, especially Ash, it was fantastic. I think that photo tells a story. It tells a story of our dressing room. It is a great dressing room to be in. It is a lively dressing room to be in! There are some great characters in there.

“I think it is important to have a mix of characters in the dressing room. It’s easy to have a good dressing room when you are doing well but it is important when you have a bad result that you try and help those round about you. We have a lot of strong characters in the dressing room, but of all the teams I have played for, it has definitely been the easiest dressing rooms to join. On the day I got here, I only knew Mark Reynolds, but it was still very easy.

“Playing the amount of games we have, especially all the Europeans ones right at the start helped me settle in a lot quicker. After the first two or three weeks I very much felt part of it. The manager and the coaching team got it spot on with how soon we were back in the summer. We were straight away together and that bonded all the lads, particularly the newcomers and the young lads, very quickly.

“We had a good week away in St Andrews when we were together 24/7. Then in the European games we travelled together and spent time in hotels. Very early on in the season, we were all fighting for each other on the pitch. And that brings us closer in the dressing room as well.

“So life is good and despite the results the last couple of weeks we have not had too many disappointments and it has been a good start to my Aberdeen career. It has justified the decision and reasons for why I wanted to come here.

“I am outspoken in the dressing room but I would like to think in a constructive way. I enjoy the banter with the boys and I like to be in amongst it at times but when it is time to put the professional head on, I like to think I know when to do this.

“At every club I have been at, I would like to think I am one of the players who can tell the difference between when you can have a bit of banter and when the professional side has to come through. There is a balance and through the years I have managed to get that balance right.

“We also have a lot of young talented players in there. It goes without saying that myself, Willo, Barry have to try and look after them as much as we can. We can pass on our knowledge from the experiences we have had. They are going to go on and have successful careers, but it is not about what they do in two or five or ten years time, it is about what they do now. Their journeys start now and we can help them.

“That is what I, and the other experienced players, can bring to the table as well as our own performances. It is important that we set a good example. They will watch how we go about things. It is a big responsibility and it is one you have to take on as a player when you reach a certain age. You have to be a role model and the manager has to be able to trust you in that role. On top of that, you have to be doing your own job properly too”.
Part of that job, and a big reason why Aberdeen were so keen to get him here, was that Paul is a great talker and a great leader on and off the park, an increasing rarity in the game. When Derek McInnes joined West Brom, they were the qualities that manager Gary Megson singled out in him, McInnes captaining Albion to promotion to the Premier League. Perhaps he sees similar gifts in Quinn.

“Passing information on on the pitch is as important as anything you do. Every player is different and people do it in different ways with different mannerisms. I am maybe a bit more aggressive and I try to get things organised on the pitch. It is like anything else in any walk of life, if you are organised then things run smoother. That is a theory I have always applied.

“It helps me, it helps my team mates round about me and it also has an effect on the opposition. If they see how organised you are, and see hungry men wanting to get a result, then they take notice. To give you an example, if we are attacking and have a throw-in up the other end of the park, but we are still organising ourselves at the back, then that can get into opponent’s heads. It is all part of the game.

“It is something I have grown into. The senior boys I played with at Motherwell were all that way. The likes of Scott Leitch, Stephen Craigan, these types of guys were constant talkers on the pitch and constant organisers. So I learned a bit from them and took things on board throughout my career”.
With so much experience in the bank, it’s little wonder that Paul is the kind of player that managers turn to in the really big games, for he’s been there, done it and has a drawer full of t-shirts. Equally, he’s shrewd enough to know that the modern game is very definitely about horses for courses.

“Everyone wants to play every week, that will never change. But that is not possible. Certain games require certain players and that is the manager’s job fortunately to work out because I would not like it! It would be a tough, tough decision.

“I have maybe played in some of the bigger games so far and that is a compliment but everyone is capable in that dressing room. The manager scrutinises everything, every opposition, every team and works out their strengths and weaknesses. He then works out how to match up against them to exploit those weaknesses and also picks a team and a system that allows us to play to our strengths.

“I think we have seen over the past couple of seasons that more often than not, he gets his team selection spot on. If I have not been picked, I know the manager has picked a team that he thinks will win. My job then is to stay focused so I am ready for when I am called upon.

“When you are at a club like Aberdeen you are in a squad situation. There are sides who have 11, 12 maybe 13 players. We are in a 19, 20, 21 man season. The upside of that is you have a fantastic squad, the downside is if the manager sticks with the same team each week, then you don’t play. But the manager has built a very good squad here and that is why he rotates the side. The important thing is that the players coming in need to do the business.

“I want to play in those bigger games, that is one of the reasons I came here. I wanted to experience Europe and I wanted to play at the top end of the table. Thankfully we have done that so far but there is a long way to go before we settle into the season.

“I think excitement overshadows nerves these days to be honest which is why I can handle the big games. The nerves when I was younger were more in terms of being worried how I played and being worried about what everyone else thought.

“At my age – I keep saying at my age and I am not that old! At this stage of my career, it is more about not wanting to upset the fans, your team mates round about you and the club. When you are younger, you just want to go out and do this and do that to get a tick beside your name at the end of the 90 minutes.

“Now there is more excitement and also probably enjoyment. There is no better feeling than going out and making the supporters happy, especially our fans. They have been sensational since I arrived. They have not shut up for three months, constantly! Going out and hearing them cheer you on, it is a special feeling.

“The supporters have a big part to play this season. They maybe don’t realise just what a difference they can make. The players have maybe helped bring some people back through the turnstiles with what they have achieved over the last couple of years. We have now seen the opposite effect as there has been a number of games this season where the fans have helped drag us through a game and helped us get a result. 

“We appreciate they spend a lot of money travelling the country to watch us play and everyone in that dressing room appreciates them”.