Profile/Niall Quinn: With a steely nerve behind his squeaky-clean image, Niall Quinn has taken a gamble by buying and now managing his old club, writes Andrew Fifield
Niall Quinn likes a gamble. As a gangly teenager with Arsenal he would regularly fritter away his €500-a-week wages within an hour at the local bookies and, though his instincts have sharpened since then, the thrill of the wager has clearly not dulled. Last week, the former Ireland forward headed a consortium that bought Sunderland Football Club and promptly appointed himself manager. In betting terms, it's akin to putting big money on an outside bet.
Quinn's dramatic return to football after a three-and-a-half year hiatus has generated a flurry of interest, and not just on Wearside.
From Sunderland to Sligo, people are asking how he managed to convince seven of Ireland's shrewdest businessmen - including publicans Charlie Chawke and Louis Fitzgerald, and property magnates Jack Tierney and Paddy Kelly - to join him in spending €14m on a club which was not only relegated last season, but which finished with an all-time record low points total for the English Premiership.
On one level, Quinn's return is driven by sentiment. He spent six years at Sunderland as a player, helping Peter Reid's side to two Football League championships and a seventh-placed Premiership finish in 2001. There were 69 goals, too, as well as countless assists for Kevin Phillips, the gnomic striker for whom Quinn's 6' 8" frame was the ideal foil. Sunderland fans had never had it so good and "Niall Quinn's Disco Pants" - an ode to a pair of garish trousers favoured by the Dubliner for nights out - swiftly became the soundtrack to matches at the Stadium of Light.
But that was then. Since Reid and Quinn departed in 2002, Wearside expectations have been flattened by two chastening relegations. The club's famously loyal support began to lose hope, with last season's average crowd dipping below 34,000. Protests against the chairman Bob Murray turned hostile after he was physically threatened by one supporter while dining with his wife in a Newcastle restaurant. The club was managerless, penniless and apparently adrift. Enter Quinn.
"I am afraid of nothing at this football club," he said upon his return. "The emotion of the people when the club is going well is something to behold. Everybody thinks Newcastle are far bigger than Sunderland, but I know if this club goes right we will be bigger. It's like being on a magic carpet when things are going well."
The image is appropriate, because north-east football followers prefer their messiahs to be airborne. When Kevin Keegan bade a teary goodbye to Newcastle as a player in 1984, he did so from a helicopter above St James' Park. Quinn descending on the Stadium of Light aboard a flying Persian rug for next Saturday's league opener against Plymouth would be a fitting entrance on a day which has already been unofficially christened "St Niall's Day".
Quinn certainly has a divine aura. He donated the entire proceeds of his Sunderland testimonial - around €1.3m - to various children's charities on Wearside and in Ireland. In an industry notorious for swollen egos, his honesty, eloquence and self-effacing nature are refreshing. Even his wife Gillian has done her bit for the whiter-than-white image, lending her image to Surf washing powder.
"He's incredibly disorganised and never answers his phone," said one journalist who knows Quinn well, "but he's definitely one of the nice guys". There are some who disagree. Roy Keane, perhaps predictably, fell out with Quinn over his acrimonious departure from the Republic of Oreland's World Cup squad in 2002. The former Manchester United midfielder was furious that Quinn, along with his fellow senior player, Steve Staunton - nowe the manager - had failed to back his criticisms of the squad's pre-tournament training camp, choosing instead to support the then embattled manager, Mick McCarthy.
In his autobiography, Keane branded Quinn a "muppet" and a "dead fish", content to "go with the flow." He also described how Quinn and Staunton had visited him in his hotel room immediately after his walk-out to express their sympathy and surprise.
"Little did I know that they'd already stood beside McCarthy at a press conference before coming to tell me how sorry they were," wrote Keane. "Cowards." Quinn's handling of a volatile situation had been clumsy, but it showed that - contrary to his squeaky-clean image - he did not shy away from football's dark, Machiavellian arts.
His appetite for political manoeuvrings had been fostered at Sunderland, where he had enjoyed a far more elevated status than that of a mere player. If he did not boast the same influence as his fellow forward Alan Shearer 10 miles down the A184 at Newcastle - where managers were rumoured to be hired and fired on the whim of the city's favourite No 9 - he was not far behind.
"Niall can adapt to most situations," says his former international team-mate Tony Cascarino. "He can be brutal or he can put an arm round your shoulder. He is likeable and approachable, but I have seen him lose it and have a rant." Another former colleague, Kevin Kilbane, agrees. "His experience and talent made him the sort of player who could affect everyone around him. Everyone could look at Niall and see what he had achieved and be impressed. He is a legend."
But legends are there to be debunked, especially in football. Quinn may have been granted beatific status by Wearsiders exhausted by years of splintered expectations, but the honeymoon is not indefinite.
Having been indelibly linked with one successful Sunderland regime he will naturally be expected to spearhead another and nothing - not the mountains of debt, the threadbare squad and certainly not Quinn's managerial inexperience - will excuse a poor campaign in what looks an ordinary Coca-Cola Championship.
History is not on Quinn's side. Chairmen always like to think they make the best managers: Bernard Tapie, the former Marseille owner, once quipped that he had never actually fired one of his coaches because "I am the chairman and the coach". But the joke wore thin once the French club had been stripped of a league championship and relegated after they were found guilty of match-fixing, with Tapie later being imprisoned for his role in the scandal.
Closer to home, the picture is hardly prettier. Michael Knighton, the former owner of Carlisle United, appointed himself manager in 1997 and saw the club relegated six months later.
In recent years, only Ron Noades can boast any semblance of success in the dual role. He bought Brentford in 1998 and led them to the old Third Division championship in his first season but within two years he had departed, detested by the club's supporters.
It is into this churning cauldron that Quinn has decided to plunge.
On the face of it, it seems every gambler's idea of a nightmare wager - one where the stakes are ruinously high and the dividends unappealingly low. But, in blackjack parlance, sticking is not his style and twisting comes easy to a man wearing disco pants.
"I feel like a young kid bursting to come on," he said. "It's not easy but I think the rewards - and we're not talking financial - will be greater than for anything else I've ever done."
The Quinn File
Who is he?
Niall Quinn, the former Republic of Ireland centre forward and all-round Mr Nice Guy
Why is he in the news?
Having bought Sunderland FC, he has also appointed himself as manager
Most appealing characteristic
Charming personality, lovely kids, beautiful wife . . . need any more?
Least appealing characteristic
Perhaps too squeaky-clean for his own good
Most likely to say
"Of course you can buy an expensive new striker, gaffer"
Least likely to say
"You're fired"