Micky Quinn
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| Micky Quinn | ||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Michael Quinn | |
| Date of birth | 2 May 1962 | |
| Place of birth | Everton, Liverpool, England | |
| Height | 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) | |
| Playing position | Centre forward | |
| Youth career | ||
| 1978–1979 | Derby County | |
| Senior career1 | ||
| Years | Club | App (Gls)* |
| 1979–1981 1982–1983 1983–1985 1985–1988 1989–1992 1992–1994 1994 1994 1995–1996 |
Wigan Athletic Stockport County Oldham Athletic Portsmouth Newcastle United Coventry City → Plymouth Argyle (loan) → Watford (loan) PAOK F.C. |
69 (19) 63 (39) 80 (34) 121 (54) 115 (59) 64 (25) 3 (0) 5 (0) 9 (1) |
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1 Senior club appearances and goals |
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Michael "Micky" Quinn (born 2 May 1962 in Everton, Liverpool) is a former football player. He was predominantly a centre forward during his career.
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[edit] Career
Quinn began his career as an apprentice with Derby County on leaving school in 1978, but left after just one season and turned professional on joining Wigan Athletic in September 1979. Shortly afterwards he came to the attention of Social Security after being reported for claiming unemployment benefit while being employed full-time by Wigan Athletic. He had decided to continue signing on and claiming unemployment benefit to help his family, but quickly withdrew his claim and arranged to pay back the money in installments.
After helping Wigan gain promotion to the Third Division in 1982, he was transferred to Stockport County, where he established himself as a regular goalscorer before joining Second Division Oldham Athletic in January 1984.
Quinn joined Portsmouth in March 1986 but they just missed out on promotion to the First Division. In April 1986, he was found guilty of drink-driving and received a £100 fine as well as a one-year driving ban. He breached the driving ban twice later that year, and on 19 January 1987 was sentenced to 21 days in prison, but was freed after serving 14 days.
Despite this, he was Portsmouth's top goalscorer with 24 goals in all competitions as they finished Second Division runners-up and reclaimed the First Division place that they had last held in the late 1950s. However, Portsmouth were relegated back to the Second Division after one season. Quinn stayed at Fratton Park for the 1988/89 season and scored 20 league goals, but Portsmouth finished 20th in the league and their good early season form was perhaps all that saved them from a second successive relegation. Halfway through the season, manager Alan Ball had left to be succeeded by John Gregory, and this transition was largely blamed for Portsmouth's slump in form.
Newcastle United manager Jim Smith paid £680,000 for Quinn in July 1989, just after their relegation to the Second Division. Portsmouth manager John Gregory had demanded £1.5million for Quinn, but Smith had offered just £250,000 and the fee was set by a tribunal.
He scored four goals on his debut in a 5–2 home win over Leeds United on 19 August and finished as the Football League's top goalscorer in 1989/90 with 34 league goals. He managed 39 in all competitions. Newcastle were beaten to the automatic promotion places by Leeds and Sheffield United, and their promotion hopes were ended when they lost to Sunderland in the playoffs. He scored 20 goals for them the following season, but the club's league form slumped and they finished 10th. Before the season ended, Quinn and his team-mates had a new manager after Jim Smith resigned to be succeeded by Ossie Ardiles.
Quinn was ruled out of action for three months when in October 1991 he suffered a knee injury, and managed just seven goals in 22 games. 1991-92 was arguably the worst season in Newcastle United's history as they only narrowly avoided relegation to the third tier of the English league. Ardiles was sacked on 5 February 1992 to be succeeded by Kevin Keegan, but Quinn fell out with Keegan soon afterwards over newspaper speculation that Quinn had condemned the set-up as a "shambles". When the 1992-93 season began, Quinn was no longer a first choice player in the team and on 20 November 1992 he was sold to Coventry City for £250,000 after an undisclosed bid from Aston Villa was rejected.
During his first six months at Highfield Road, Quinn scored 17 Premier League goals - 10 of them in his first 6 games. His performances were not enough to bring Coventry City beyond 15th place in the final table (although they had occupied fourth place at one stage), but they improved to 11th place the following season with Quinn scoring eight league goals, starting the 1993/94 season with a hat-trick against Arsenal in a 3–0 away win. Quinn featured regularly for Coventry during the 1993/94 season, still scoring goals on a regular basis, but in September 1994 Coventry signed Dion Dublin and Quinn lost his place in the team. He had unproductive loan spells with Plymouth Argyle (in November 1994) and Watford (in March 1995) before new manager Ron Atkinson gave him a free transfer on 1 May 1995.
Quinn appeared on BBC TV's Football Focus as part of their 'Cult Heroes' series in 2005, inspired by his relatively prolific two seasons as Highfield Road. Whilst at Coventry, he was nicknamed 'Sumo' and was famously quoted as being the Premier League's 'fastest player over a yard'. He attracted the crowd chant of "Who Ate All the Pies?", which he used as the title of his 2003 autobiography. Other nicknames included "Sumo" and "Bob", the latter from football fans who claimed that he bore a physical resemblance to the television presenter Bob Carolgees.
Quinn was seriously considered for inclusion into the England football squad during 1993. On leaving Coventry, Quinn had a brief spell playing in Greece with PAOK Thessaloniki FC. Around this time, his youngest brother Sean (a former apprentice footballer with Liverpool and later Portsmouth) died suddenly at the age of 26. Shortly afterwards, his mother Patricia died of cancer aged 52.
Quinn applied for the manager's job at Burnley in 1996, but it went to Adrian Heath instead, and he decided to retire from football and concentrate on his career as a racehorse trainer.
[edit] Retirement
Following his retirement from football in 1996, Quinn became a professional racehorse trainer and now has stables at Newmarket, Suffolk. He also covers horse racing and football for the radio station TalkSPORT.
[edit] Personal life
Quinn was the first of four children born to Michael and Patricia Quinn. He was born in the Everton area of Liverpool, but in 1967 the family was rehoused to a new council house on Cantril Farm.
He has one son, Michael (born 1980), twin daughters, Melissa and Natasha (born 1988) and another daughter Mia who was born in 2007.
[edit] Further reading
- Quinn, Micky; Oliver Harvey (2003). Who Ate All the Pies?: The Life and Times of Mick Quinn. Virgin. ISBN 1852270721.
- Sharpe, Graham (2003). Classic Horse-Racing Quotes: Horse-Racing History in the Words of Those Who Made It. Anova Books. ISBN 1861058594.
