For a phenomenon that is only a few years old, the story risks becoming repetitive.
An Irish lad who grew up playing a kicking sport realises he’s a naturally better ball-striker than Americans lacking the same GAA, rugby or soccer background. He has a go at kicking a pigskin. The ball flies off the boot. American colleges or sometimes even NFL franchises have their heads turned.
For all the growing familiarity with Ireland’s newfound relationship with the gridiron, Andy Quinn’s story still stands out.
The Creggs native was an outhalf at Blackrock College. He played at youth level for Connacht. While his Junior Cup year was disrupted by Covid, Quinn still might have pulled on the 10 jersey during a Senior Cup run.
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He gave it up. Instead, he finished school in England – if school is the right word. Quinn sat his Leaving Cert while attending the NFL Academy in Loughborough. In his own words, it was “Blackrock College but for American football, but then on steroids” – of the metaphorical, not literal kind.
The move paid off. Quinn earned a scholarship to kick and punt at Boston College. His flight leaves in January. Next year, Boston College’s schedule includes dates with Michigan State, Cal Berkley, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame and Stanford. Recruited as both a kicker and punter, Quinn is more likely to see early game time in the latter role.
He may or may not become the next Irishman in the NFL after Dan Whelan, Jude McAtamney and Charlie Smyth, but he will get a degree.
In recent years, the National Collegiate Athletics Association started allowing unpaid student athletes to finally take some share of the billions they generate as part of America’s obsession with college sports. Players can now profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL).
On top of that, some schools will soon start sharing their revenue with players. One figure involved in college sports suggests that kickers and punters can earn anywhere from $50,000-$300,000 a year.
Like plenty of us, Quinn needed something to keep him sane during the pandemic lockdowns. In true Irish outhalf fashion, he became “obsessed” with training his place kicking. Listening to him talk technique, he isn’t lying.
“It was like a round of golf for me,” he explains. “I’d kick the balls in, kick them over the bar and then kick them back out. I’d do that for five or six hours, three or four times a week. Through that, my rugby kicking became quite good but I never knew it would transfer into another sport.
“Anyone I was following on Instagram was to do with kicking a rugby ball and also gym work. My phone was clogged up with videos of me kicking. After doing it for a while, it was pretty obvious to me that if I missed and it went left, I didn’t have a strong enough follow through. I always found that it was my foot contact and follow through that were the determining factors if the ball went over the bar or not.”
Originally from Creggs on the Roscommon-Galway border (Quinn supports Galway, for what it’s worth), he went down the Caelan Doris route of moving from out west to board at Blackrock. Aged 15, Connacht started taking notice.
He didn’t always line out at outhalf. Listed at 6ft 4ins, a growth spurt one summer left Quinn close to that height at an early enough stage. Blackrock took one look at him and stuck him in the second row as a lineout jumper.
While there’s a bit of muscle on the frame now, he’s no Joe McCarthy. Had Quinn stuck at rugby and progressed through the system, Sam Prendergast wouldn’t have been the only outhalf being asked questions about his slight frame.
“It helped a lot because I was skinny so they could throw me up in the lineout, literally fire me up,” says Quinn, laughing. “I was flying for a little bit. I was playing secondrow for Blackrock College, then for my club team Buccaneers I was playing outhalf. I was still kicking.”
The summer before his fifth year at school, Quinn found Tadhg Leader, another former rugby player who is driving Ireland’s burgeoning American football involvement. Leader set up a competition, Ireland’s Kicking King. Quinn won it by landing field goals during the half-time break of a college game at the Aviva Stadium. Two days later, he was back at school on the Rock Road.
The NFL Academy needed a kicker. They were impressed that Quinn, aged 16 at the time, could land 45-yard field goals in front of a big crowd at Lansdowne Road only shortly after taking up the sport. Or so the story goes.
“That’s what the NFL Academy coaches told me, so I’m gonna go with that,” jokes Quinn.
“I was there for one year, my whole year in sixth year. I had to study the Leaving Cert on my own. I didn’t go to any classes, I was in Loughborough and I did all my study in my dorm room and I got some help from the academic adviser. I had some grinds, but I was mainly looking at the books and teaching myself the Leaving Cert curriculum.
“We had a few hiccups along the way. I couldn’t complete the PE project and the Ag Science project because I was an external candidate. At Easter time, I had to pick up business. I had six weeks to learn the whole course, I hadn’t done it for the Junior Cert. For some reason I decided to do higher level but I got a H4 so I’ll take that.”
The non-sporting aspects of Quinn’s story also stand out. When he first answered the phone for this article, he apologised for sounding flustered. Quinn had just rushed back from a morning’s work. The NIL money isn’t on its way yet.
He works with a child with an intellectual disability, accompanying him on the bus to school.
“I sit in the back with him, make sure he puts on his seat belt. I keep him engaged, make sure he doesn’t open doors.”
The job came up primarily because of a familiarity with disability. Quinn’s younger brother has 22q, a deletion of DNA on his 22nd chromosome. Aged 10, Andy learned sign language so the pair could communicate. Since gaining some notoriety for his kicking, Quinn has pushed to raise more awareness of the condition.
Another brother – there are four young Quinn lads – was previously diagnosed with benign leukaemia. He underwent chemotherapy treatment during the pandemic. Everyone who leaves on the boat grapples with varying degrees of sadness, guilt and early onset homesickness, but for a family which has gone through some hardship, it must be particularly difficult for the eldest child to go.
“My grand uncle, he emigrated to America when his youngest brother was 10,” says Quinn. “I was talking to them recently and they said they never really got to know each other that much. It’s on my mind to keep in contact with my brothers, because they are so young.
“I spent seven weeks over in America this summer and when I came back, I didn’t tell my younger brothers I was coming. For the first time ever they were happy to see me.”
One last question remains. Quinn was on the Junior Cup panel in 2021. He may well have featured in the Senior Cup, a more familiar path to professional sport than an academy in Loughborough. You don’t need to read Ross O’Carroll-Kelly to know that, for schools like this, rugby is everything. Especially if you play 10.
“Why did I leave rugby? The opportunity,” says Quinn. “Making any sort of money in American football or rugby is a bit of a long shot anyway, so I thought I’d rather get to see more parts of the world and do something which I really enjoy, which is kicking.
“I love kicking footballs. When I played rugby, it was to get the conversion after the try or to get a 50/22. That’s why I played.”
Back home in Creggs, there is a stream outside Quinn’s house which represents the border between two counties.
“You can’t really say whether I’m from Roscommon or Galway because you’ll offend some people,” he says, again laughing.
Winning a Senior Cup or lining out for Connacht may well have sparked an intercounty battle to claim Quinn as their own. Once he’s launching footballs into the Massachusetts sky, and potentially beyond, those debates will linger for a while yet.
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