Career
He made his League of Ireland debut three days later. He had a spell at Shelbourne, where he was Player of the Month in February 1982. He attracted the interest of Manchester City during his time at Shels.
Byrne signed for Shamrock Rovers in the summer of 1984.
He was the league top scorer in the 1986/87 season and made 6 appearances in European competition. Transfer talks with Saint Etienne and Feyenoord didn"t work out so after 72 goals in 146 games, in January 1988 Mick signed for Football Club Den Haag thus ending an extraordinarily successful period at Rovers.
He briefly re-signed for Rovers again in July 1988 but after 3 goals in 6 games he left for Huddersfield Town F.C. the following month for £20,000. After two seasons in which he scored 11 goals in 56 league games, he came back to Rovers for the club"s first season in the RDS but left in January 1991 after 5 goals in 20 appearances for Sligo Rovers as the club had an abundance of strikers.
At Sligo he scored 6 goals in 34 total appearances, 27 in the league.
During his time at Rovers he scored 46 league goals and 10 goals in the FAI Cup. He also played in 3 1988 Summer Olympics qualifiers, scoring twice. He had two more spells at Shels and also represented Dundalk F.C., Monaghan United, Saint James"s Gate F.C. (one game) and Athlone Town during his career.
With Monaghan he finished First Division top scorer in the 1992/93 season as his 15 league goals helped them to promotion.
He was Rovers top goalscorer in 1984/85, 1986/87 and 1987/88 and made 5 appearances in Europe. At the end of the 2012 League of Ireland season Byrne is joint twenty seventh in the all-time League of Ireland goalscoring list with 117 league goals In 1996 he managed Saint James"s Gate F.C. for two games, playing once, before their resignation from the league.
He then returned to Rovers as assistant manager to Pat Byrne before taking over as the manager for the 1997/98 season. He was replaced by Damien Richardson.
Team /80 Individual.
