Mickey Quinn

Former Wigan Athletic, Stockport County, Oldham Athletic, Portsmouth, Newcastle United and Coventry City striker.

Michael "Mickey" Quinn played as a centre-forward for the vast majority of his career. However, despite being a consistent goalscorer, he was more notorious for his large build.

Following his retirement from football in 1996, Quinn has become a professional racehorse trainer and now has stables at Newmarket in Suffolk. He also covers horse racing and football for Talk Sport radio..

Mickey 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.

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.

He joined Portsmouth in March 1986 but they just missed out on promotion to the First Division.

The next season 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. 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.

During his first six months at Highfield Road, Quinn scored 17 Premiership 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, but they improved to 11th place the following season with Quinn still scoring regularly, 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 and Watford 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 Premiership's 'fastest player over a yard'. 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. In 2003 he released his autobiography, "Who Ate All The Pies?" He appeared on the 2006 series of Celebrity Fit Club, weighing more than 18 stone and finished the programme as Mr Fit Club, having lost 24% of his initial body weight and now feeling refreshed. This later led Harvey Walden, the US Marine instructor, on the series comparing him to The Incredible Hulk.

While at Portsmouth the fans' chant for him was, "He's fat, he's round, he's worth a million pound - Mickey Quinn!" A colourful character he is very popular on the after dinner circuit.

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