The 26-year-old Stoke City star was shattered by the Republic's controversial play-off exit to France when Thierry Henry controversially scored with his hand.
Ireland will return to competitive action for the first time since that infamous night on Friday as they attempt to launch their Euro 2012 qualifying campaign with victory over Armenia in Yerevan.
Eye on the ball: Glenn Whelan is looking ahead to the European Championships
Andorra head for Dublin's Aviva Stadium four days later, and a maximum points haul would give Giovanni Trapattoni's men just the start they desire, and send a message to Group B rivals Russia and Slovakia.
Whelan said: 'Because of what happened in the last campaign, everyone was just hoping for this to come around as soon as possible.
'Hopefully with this campaign here, everyone can forget about what happened in Paris.
'We are not going into any campaign thinking, 'Let's go for second'. We are definitely going for top and hopefully that's the case.
'We know we have some tough places to go to and we are going to have some hard games, but we can just worry about ourselves. That's what we are going to do and hopefully qualify.
'It doesn't matter if we are playing Armenia or Russia, we will worry about ourselves.'
Stoke clinch surprise Jermaine Pennant deal as winger joins Eidur Gudjohnsen, Marc Wilson and Salif Diao at Britannia'Tony Pulis is more than a manager to me': Salif Diao pens two-year deal to stay with StokeSTOKE FC
Source: Daily Mail
Source: Daily Mail