The Mourne’s supreme athlete

mickey Linden’s sporting career was as long as it was illustrious but two All-Ireland titles and three Ulster crowns don’t tell half the story about a man who, along with Peter Canavan, was probably the most electrifying inside forward in the country during the 1990s.

Even up to last summer he was still at it: sprinting and skipping onto that ball, swerving and shooting it over his shoulder and over the bar, skinning you.

It had been well over a year since he’d last played but when his son Cormac told him the thirds were struggling for numbers for their championship game against Darragh Cross, Mickey Linden brought the gear bag, just in case. When he arrived at the field, the team manager was glad to see him. Benny Coulter may have been the biggest name on the Down county panel but would have considered himself a club man first, and so if taking the thirds was a way to give the club a hand, he was glad to do it; now he needed his old mentor and schoolboy idol to help them out as well, be a sub. Sure wasn’t he in some nick, wearing a smaller jean size than he did when he played for Down? So, at 50, Mickey Linden went in and laced them up again.