Mick Prendergast is a retired English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 professional footballer whose career lasted from 1969 to 1979 during which time he made a total of 232 appearances in all competitions, scoring 62 goals. He was a forward

Striker

Forwards, also known as strikers, are the players on a team in association football who play nearest to the opposing team's goal, and are therefore principally responsible for scoring goals...

 player who played for Sheffield Wednesday

Sheffield Wednesday F.C.

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club are a football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, who are currently competing in the Football League One in the 2011-12 season, in England. Sheffield Wednesday are one of the oldest professional clubs in the world and the fourth oldest in the...

 and Barnsley

Barnsley F.C.

Barnsley Football Club are a professional English football club based in the town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Nicknamed the Tykes, they were founded in 1887 under the name Barnsley St. Peter's...

. Prendergast was a popular player in his time at Hillsborough

Hillsborough Stadium

Hillsborough Stadium is the home of Sheffield Wednesday football club, Sheffield, England. Football has been played at the ground since it was opened on 2 September 1899, when Wednesday moved from their original ground at Olive Grove. Today it is a 39,812 capacity all-seater stadium, making it the...

 and went by the nickname of “Prendo”.

Prendergast was born in the South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

 coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 village of Denaby Main

Denaby Main Colliery Village

Denaby Main is a village situated between Mexborough and Conisbrough in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. It was built by the Denaby Main Colliery Company to house its workers and their families, and originally given the name Denaby Main Colliery Village, to...

 on 24 November 1950.

Playing career

As a youth footballer he played for Yorkshire Boys and Don and Dearne Boys before joining Sheffield Wednesday as a 15 year old apprentice in October 1966.

Sheffield Wednesday

Prendergast started in the Youth team at Wednesday and graduated through the ranks, making his reserve team debut in the Central League

Central League (football)

The Central League , is a football league in England for reserve teams primarily of Football League clubs in the Midlands and North of England....

 in September 1967. Prendergast was top scorer for the reserves in 1968–69 and he made his first team debut towards the end of that season, scoring in a 3–2 defeat at Newcastle United

Newcastle United F.C.

Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, and has played at its current home ground, St James' Park, since the merger...

 on 9 April 1969. The following season saw Wednesday relegated to Division Two

Football League Second Division

From 1892 until 1992, the Football League Second Division was the second highest division overall in English football.This ended with the creation of the FA Premier League, prior to the start of the 1992–93 season, which caused an administrative split between The Football League and the teams...

 with Prendergast making just 12 league appearances. The 1970–71 season saw Prendergast become a regular in the first team, finishing as top scorer by a comfortable margin with 16 goals.

The rest of his Sheffield Wednesday career saw Prendergast beset by injuries, in 1972–73 he only made 19 appearances after suffering cartilage

Cartilage

Cartilage is a flexible connective tissue found in many areas in the bodies of humans and other animals, including the joints between bones, the rib cage, the ear, the nose, the elbow, the knee, the ankle, the bronchial tubes and the intervertebral discs...

 trouble and internal bleeding in his knee. He returned the following season to forge a good striking partnership with Brian Joicey

Brian Joicey

Brian Joicey was a professional footballer who played for Coventry City, Sheffield Wednesday and Barnsley, England, in a career that lasted from 1969 to 1979...

 which realised 23 goals, with Prendergast contributing 11 and being voted Player of the Year. However, misfortune struck towards the end of that season when he suffered a broken leg in a goalless draw at Preston

Preston North End F.C.

Preston North End Football Club is an English professional football club located in the Deepdale area of the city of Preston, Lancashire, currently playing in the third tier of English league football, League One...

 on 12 April 1974.

Prendergast returned to first team action in February 1975 to play five games in a struggling Wednesday side that suffered relegation to Division Three

Football League Third Division

The Football League Third Division was the 3 tier of English Football from 1920 until 1992 when after the formation of the Football Association Premier League saw the league renamed The Football League Division Two...

 for the first time in their history. He scored the clubs first ever goal in Division Three in a 1–2 away defeat at Southend

Southend United F.C.

Southend United Football Club is an English football club based at Roots Hall Stadium, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, who play in Football League Two. Their home ground is Roots Hall, and the club plan to move into a new 22,000-seater stadium located at Fossetts Farm.-Stadium:The club has had...

 in August 1975 and went on to have a good season as he netted 13 goals in 39 appearances to be top scorer for the second time. In the 1976–77 campaign he was limited to five full appearances as injury and the good form of Rodger Wylde

Rodger Wylde

Rodger Wylde, born in Sheffield, Yorkshire on 8 March 1954, is a former professional football player who played for Sheffield Wednesday, Oldham Athletic, Sporting CP, Sunderland, Barnsley and Stockport County. Wylde played as a striker, he was good in the air but had fine skill on the ground for a...

 and Tommy Tynan kept him out of the team. In April 1977, after ten years service with the club, he was granted a testimonial match

Testimonial match

A testimonial match or testimonial game, often referred to simply as a testimonial, is a practice in some sports, notably football and especially in the United Kingdom, where a club puts on a match in honour of a player for service to the club....

 against Leicester City

Leicester City F.C.

Leicester City Football Club , also known as The Foxes, is an English professional football club based at the King Power Stadium in Leicester...

 with 3,179 fans turning up to see Leicester win 3–2 with Ron Springett

Ron Springett

Ronald "Ron" Deryk George Springett was a football goalkeeper for Sheffield Wednesday, QPR and England.-Career:Springett made 33 appearances for England, then the most by any Sheffield Wednesday player. He held this record for 26 years. He made his England debut against Northern Ireland in 1959...

 and Peter Swan coming out of retirement to play for Mick. Prendergast was placed on the transfer list in January 1978 as Jack Charlton

Jack Charlton

John "Jack" Charlton, OBE, DL is a former footballer and manager who played for Leeds United in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and was part of the England team who won the 1966 World Cup...

, who had taken over as Wednesday manager, began a clear out of staff. In March 1978 just before the transfer window

Transfer window

The transfer window is the period during the year in which a football club can transfer players from other countries into their playing staff. Such a transfer is completed by registering the player into the new club through FIFA...

 closed he signed for Barnsley for a fee of £14,000.

Barnsley

Prendergast stayed at Barnsley for 14 months, but he only made 12 full league appearances in that time, making a single appearance in the 1978–79 season as Barnsley gained promotion from Division Four

Football League Fourth Division

The Fourth Division of The Football League was the fourth-highest division in the English football league system from the 1958–59 season until the creation of the Premier League prior to the 1992–93 season...

. He went on a months loan to Halifax Town in October/November 1978 making four league appearances and one in the FA Cup

FA Cup

The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...

. He scored his last goal for a league club while with Halifax, netting in a 1–2 defeat at Grimsby Town

Grimsby Town F.C.

Grimsby Town Football Club is an English football club based in the seaside town of Cleethorpes, in North East Lincolnshire, England, who compete in the Conference National. They were formed in 1878 as Grimsby Pelham and later became Grimsby Town...

 on 18 November 1978.

Latter career and retirement

With his professional career over at the age of 29, Prendergast had brief spells in non-league football

Non-league football

Non-League football is football in England played at a level below that of the Premier League and The Football League. The term non-League was commonly used well before 1992 when the top football clubs in England all belonged to The Football League; all clubs who were not a part of The Football...

 at Mexborough Town Athletic

Mexborough Town Athletic F.C.

A.F.C. Sportsman Rovers is an English association football club from Mexborough, in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire founded prior to 1892. The club have a prominent history in Yorkshire non-league football, being founding members of some of its most long standing competitions...

 and Denaby United

Denaby United F.C.

Denaby United F.C. are an English football club that originally folded in 2002 following eviction from their ground by the Denaby & Cadeby Miners' Welfare, but have since re-appeared in the Doncaster and District Senior League Division One for the 2011-12 season...

. He was given a second testimonial match while at Denaby against Sheffield Wednesday before being advised to retire completely from playing on medical grounds in the early 1980s. He was forced to have a hip replacement

Hip replacement

Hip replacement is a surgical procedure in which the hip joint is replaced by a prosthetic implant. Hip replacement surgery can be performed as a total replacement or a hemi replacement. Such joint replacement orthopaedic surgery generally is conducted to relieve arthritis pain or fix severe...

at the age of 36.