He began as a youth player with Blackpool before moving to the United States to join the Dallas Tornado of the North American Soccer League in 1968.
He never cracked the first-team lineup but played regularly for the youth team against the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton.
In 1967 at age 19, he answered a newspaper advertisement looking for top class young players interested in moving to the United States to play professional soccer.
He sufficiently impressed Bob Kap at the trial to be offered a position with the Dallas Tornado of the newly established North American Soccer League.
That team started pre-season training in Madrid, Spain in August 1967 before embarking on an unprecedented seven-month, twenty-nine-game world tour visiting over twenty countries.
Renshaw scored the winning goal in the third, and deciding, game of the series, the only outdoor professional championship ever won by a Dallas soccer team.
[citation needed] Renshaw was plagued with bad knees for several years and in 1976, doctors advised him that he could no longer play without risking lifelong damage.
The Tornado had also lost two of their best American players, Tony Bellinger and Steve Petcher (three had to be on the field at all times) to the new MISL (Major Indoor Soccer League).
Renshaw did color commentary, with Norm Hitzges doing play-by-play, for the Dallas Sidekicks of the Major Indoor Soccer League.
Renshaw stayed very involved in the development of youth soccer in the North Texas area and coached at a well-known Dallas private school.
Mike Renshaw was named, in an article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, as one of the ten most influential people in North Texas soccer history (notation requested).