RTE Sport: Quinn relieved to get job done against Palatine

Tomas Quinn admitted he was thankful to see his St Vincent’s side fend off a spirited Palatine outfit to advance to the Leinster semi-finals at Dr Cullen Park.

The All-Ireland favourites were expected to have little difficulty swatting aside the Carlow champions, but were just two points ahead at half-time as Palatine hung tough with the Dublin giants.

At one stage, Vincent’s went 22 minutes without troubling the scoreboard operator, but eventually their attack kicked into gear and they pulled away to record an eight-point victory.

“It was a bit of a strange one from our perspective,” Quinn admitted when speaking to RTÉ Sport. “We got off to a pretty good start and then went flat for long periods of the first half and allowed them back into it.
“We spoke about it at half-time, that we needed to up the performance, and thankfully we improved and did enough to get the job done.

“Twenty-two minutes without scoring is unacceptable for us, we needed to put that right or we weren’t going to be in the game for much longer. Guys calmed down a bit and started taking better options and we created some good chances.”

Quinn helped himself to five points, but conceded that he, and Vincent’s as a whole, would need to up their game ahead of a semi-final against the surprising Mullinalaghta.

I was pretty poor in the first half, like a lot of our guys,” Quinn said.

“Second half I was able to get on the end of a few moves. It was a case of getting through to the next day and we’ve two weeks to try and improve and try and get better.”