If you’re a Newcastle United fan, it’s almost certain that you’ll love a number 9. We’ve been brought up on them. For the older generation, we would have been told stories of Jackie Milburn, Hughie Gallagher and Len White. Some of us might even have been lucky enough to watch the great Supermac in the 70s. The younger generation could point to the brilliance of the likes of Cole, Ferdinand, Shearer and even Callum Wilson.
No one can argue that we’ve had a glut of quality strikers to have idolised over the years. Even when you move away from the obvious, you’ll still find some excellent strikers who’ve left their mark on Tyneside. Micky Quinn is definitely one of those names and to this day holds cult status in Newcastle.
Quinn was signed from Portsmouth at a turbulent time for the club. Arriving in July 1989 for £680,000, he was joining a fractured club. Many supporters were boycotting the club and protesting against the board of the time which was led by one of the most unpopular chairmen of my lifetime in Gordon McKeag. So while Quinn jumped at the chance to join the Toon, he certainly wasn’t popular from the off. Quinn himself famously tells a story of seeing the protests as he walked through the city and bearing witness to a banner that asked ‘Who the f**k is Mick Quinn?’
I was well aware of who he was as the kind of geeky kid who always kept track of the top scorers in every division, so Quinny’s signing excited me and was a rare piece of good news at a time when I could feel myself drifting away from the club and its under-ambitious ownership. As well as being a Bob Carolgees lookalike, Quinny was known for being a little on the larger side and in truth wasn’t the perfect physical specimen, but as he’d say later on in his career, he was the fastest you’d find over the first yard!
My cousin was part of the supporter boycott and I was torn between getting a ticket for the first game of the season or standing outside St. James’ Park like he did and trying to persuade people to stay away and put pressure on the board. Thankfully, I went in that day.
Quinny’s debut is the stuff of modern NUFC folklore. In front of just over 24,000 fans, he scored four goals in a 5-2 win against promotion favourites Leeds United. By the end of the game, no one was asking who he was anymore and Quinny quickly became a crowd favourite. Having stood watching the likes of Frank Pingel, Mirandinha and Rob Macdonald struggle to score goals in the previous season, I was thrilled that we had such a number 9 as Micky Quinn and for many others he would become a hero just based on that game alone.
Quinny scored 34 goals in that first season, cementing his place in the history of the club and also in the hearts of many a supporter of a certain age. After 4 on debut he then went on to score in each of the next 4 games and he simply kept on scoring all season. His record for that season – 34 in 53 games has him in 5th place for the most goals scored in a season at NUFC. I was 18 at the time and the partnership between Quinny and Mark McGhee that season remains one of my favourites of all time.
In his second season Quinny scored 20 goals, but the team finished 11th in the old 2nd division and the writing was on the wall for manager Ossie Ardiles. The season that followed was the now infamous and almost disastrous one that ended with Kevin Keegan coming in as manager and somehow managing to save us from the drop. Quinn scored 10 that year but was eclipsed by midfielder Gavin Peacock who got 21 and it would become obvious that the manager didn’t really fancy our cult hero.
During that amazing first season in ’89-’90 I was lucky enough to meet Micky. He was part of a group of Newcastle players who were taking part in a charity cricket match at a local cricket club in Swalwell. Me and a couple of mates went along and skulked around on the boundary, waiting to try and grab a word with our heroes. I was 17 and still very much in awe of these people who I watched week in week out.
Having managed to get an autograph from Kevin Brock, we waited and waited for Quinny and when he was fielding right by the rope we grabbed our opportunity. He signed my old green and yellow striped away top and was just a genuinely nice bloke. He’d taken a flying catch moments before and was full of himself, as you would be!
Another, rather different memory of Quinny would be from a couple of seasons later and the 91-92 season. It was away at Sunderland and the infamous Liam O’Brien over the wall game. Quinny was actually injured and on crutches at the time but I have a vivid memory of him approaching the way fans in the Roker End at the end of the game, wildly waving his crutches around and celebrating. We’d had a few crucial injuries going into the game and so the draw was actually a great result and Micky, like the whole away end, was ecstatic. He knew just what the club meant to the fans!
To those of us who followed Newcastle United around the country in the late 80s and early 90s, Mick Quinn was a legend. When he wasn’t banging in the goals he could invariably be found ‘de-stressing’ in the local nightclubs and was a big fan of the Tuxedo Princess! A lot of that side of things is detailed in his excellent autobiography ‘Who At All The Pies’, which is a must read if Quinny is a new name to you.
In all, Quinny scored 63 goals in 126 appearances for the club and always gave everything. He embraced the weight of that number 9 shirt and did it proud, starting with that incredible debut. He was eventually sold to Coventry City where he would go on to gain cult hero status with their fans too. Newcastle United moved on in style when he was sold, with Kevin Keegan bringing in Andy Cole as we gained promotion. A lot of us fans will never forget Micky Quinn though!
Middle Age Fanclub 