It’s not quite gallows humour but Louise Quinn has been in the game long enough to know when a good laugh is needed to ease the tension.
It was her compatriot Eleanor Ryan Doyle, recently signed from Peamount United, who provided the Birmingham City dressing room with some, albeit unwitting, levity.
Tension was understandably high as manager Darren Carter and assistant Tony Elliott dissected the minutiae of a particularly humbling 5-0 defeat to Manchester United.
“Ellie said something in our meeting and I think the only people that understood her were me, Jamie Finn and Emily Whelan,” laughs Quinn.
“She just read a sentence and everyone was like, ‘Wha’? Excuse me?’ And I was just like I know exactly what you're saying Ellie, don't mind them.”
The Irish contingent at Birmingham City has grown to seven this season and Quinn, the 31-year-old centre-half, has been charged with leading a very inexperienced squad.
As well as Ryan Doyle, Ireland internationals Marie Hourihan, Harriet Scott, Emily Whelan, Jamie Finn and Lucy Quinn are also on the books at St Andrew’s.
Louise Quinn shares a house with her namesake Lucy and fellow defender Scott - the two roommates are English-born, but that hasn’t hindered the craic thusfar.
She says: “I’ve only recently just got to know Lucy Quinn and and now she's in my life every single day. I live with her, I play national team with her and I play club with her.
“I live with Harriet Scott as well so I call it a Gaeltacht house. I'm trying to call it that. They don't have a clue what it is but I’m like, we live in the Gaeltacht, just deal with it!
“It is a lovely dynamic and, and it's nice to just be there for each other as well when it's when it's needed.
“There's some good craic and you kind of try to get yourself into if you have four v four or five v five, you try get all the Irish on your team and make something of it.
“For me, it's just brilliant to see that the girls want to better themselves and want to have a go at international football as well. They're like sponges, soaking it up, the young girls.”
A costly defeat to Leicester City just after Christmas was a low-point for a young Birmingham side, who slipped below the Foxes into bottom place.
They did manage to lift themselves above Leicester following a deserved 2-0 victory over Katie McCabe’s Arsenal, Quinn’s former team, but the euphoria lasted barely a week.
Blessington native Quinn earned her stripes, like Ryan Doyle, in a league-winning Peamount side before going overseas in search of professional football.
She played Champions League football in Ireland, Sweden, England and Italy but nothing can quite prepare a player used to success for the pressure of a relegation scrap.
Quinn spins it in a slightly more positive light, insisting there’s no pressure at all for a side of whom little is expected but the potential is great.
She says: “It would be my first relegation battle. I’ve done it all know: liquidated clubs, winning leagues, winning cups, relegation. Yeah, it's all there. CV’s full.
“I'm learning to adapt to it, and it's definitely something, but I'm I really am just kind of like taking each week as it comes and and making sure that I'm feeling right to it.
“And I feel like I have been performing quite well this season. Some of the games kind of suit me because we’re more defensive so I get to try, bring out my best qualities in the team.
“I think if you were talking to an attacker, it would be a very different story. They have to be absolutely clinical with with every single one that we get.
“I'm still learning as I go. It's still a completely different job altogether but I am still, weirdly, enjoying my football and the challenge, but it hurts how we’re bottom of the table.”
An extra-time win over Sunderland in the FA Cup on Sunday, a game in which all the Irish but Hourihan featured, will provide some respite.
So to will the prospect of a trip to Murcia, Spain this month for the Pinatar Cup, in which Vera Pauw’s Ireland side will play three games, beginning with Poland on February 16.
That will serve as a timely tune-up ahead of April’s trip to Olympic runners-up Sweden for a game that will have a huge beating on Ireland’s chances of reaching a first-ever World Cup.
Quinn was the unfortunate one to deflect a shot from Stina Blackstenius, now of Arsenal, past goalkeeper Courtney Maguire when the Swedes won 1-0 in Dublin in October.
“Those few days together [in Spain] are going to be kind of pivotal to getting back into it and back into the flow - it is weird, but [back to] knowing each other again,” says Quinn.
“Sometimes you do have to have a little mental recess. It always happens where we're training with the Irish team, and it's like, 'Right yeah, set up for a corner.'
“And we're literally all standing around like, 'I cannot remember the corner' and you're only ever thinking of your club's corners, you just don't remember what you do.
“It's all these little things; taking that little switch around and making sure that you get things right.
“And thankfully, it will be not too not too big a gap then from when we finish those friendly games and go into the Sweden game. We've just got to take that momentum.
“I think that does essentially just bring it forward, it is the squad that we have and the people that we have.
“For me, the group of players has been unbelievable, and then the pool of players as well that we have.
“Sometimes we're starting off almost 30 players, and that's only even some of it. The pool of players is getting bigger and bigger.
“The choice, the competition and who can come in and out, it's just making for a really strong, competitive squad but also who really get along and enjoy each other's company.”
The squad for those games will announced next week and, while the likes of Ryan Doyle and Whelan have been pressing their case for a recall, so too has a player some could have been tempted to write off.
Megan Campbell was the star of the Irish team for years and won a treble in her first season after Manchester City headhunted the Drogheda native from college in Florida.
A series of devastating injuries, beginning with an ACL tear in 2017, mean she has barely kicked a ball in the past four-and-a-half years.
After another surgery on her ankle in pre-season, Campbell made her full Liverpool debut against Watford last month and laid on the winner with a trademark long throw.
“Megan has always been a part of the Irish squad,” says Quinn, who was speaking at the launch of the 2022 SPAR FAI Primary School 5s Programme.
“Obviously, she's had some very difficult injuries, but she's still always a part of this squad and you'd love then if she can come back in.
“She shows what she can do - Liverpool only won the game 1-0 and was down to her assist off that throw-in.
“We all know how incredibly special and unique that is, but it is what she brings on the ground and on the grass as well, and what she can do with her feet and her decision making.
“It maybe was her first starting game, and she's still able to take that pressure of starting her first game and then putting in a performance like that.
“It obviously shows that she absolutely still has that quality, and puts herself back in for contention.
“She's brilliant, and to come over everything as well, that mental strength as well. She's a fighter. And again, that's exactly what the national team need.”
