Exclusive:'Magical', 'mad as a hatter' - David Healy's memories of Doncaster Rovers and Sean O'Driscoll

David Healy's time at Doncaster Rovers may have been all-too brief but it left a lasting impression for his eventual and successful journey into management.

Healy spent two months at Rovers during his playing days, in November 2010. He arrived from Sunderland on loan, partly as cover for the injured Billy Sharp. The Northern Irishman netted a winner on debut against Millwall and another match-winning strike a week later down at Portsmouth before joining Glasgow Rangers on a permanent deal in the New Year.

Despite only being in South Yorkshire for a small portion of what was a hugely successful playing career, he says he loved working under Sean O'Driscoll.

"I thoroughly enjoyed it because as you go through your career, you learn about different managers and different things. I absolutely adored Sean O'Driscoll. I thought he was magical in terms of what he did," Healy told the Free Press.

"He was as mad as a hatter. He did things in training and in the build-up to games where you were probably thinking 'well this is a wee bit out of the normal'. Even in his training sessions, they were designed and set up for people to, as he used to call it, 'basically

think for yourselves'. It was about managing situations and managing training sessions yourself and he would then oversee it. Things like that, you learn along your own coaching journey about how to mix things up in training. I scored a couple of goals for Doncaster but I also knew at the time that Billy was injured and certainly from the first month I went there, Billy wasn't involved.

"Then in the second month, he started coming back and my position then became a little bit of work: I was a little bit deeper, a little bit wider. Then when the second month ended, I always knew I was heading back to Sunderland. It was a short-term fix for Sean and it also gave me the opportunity to get game time because in January then I went and signed for Rangers, which I was better prepared than if I'd have just played reserve team football.

"I'd played men's football, I'd worked with a brilliant and thoughtful manager in Sean and it gave me then the opportunity to remain fit, stay fit."

Just a couple of years after that fairytale move to Ibrox, Healy would hang up his boots after a stellar career that included ample plaudits with undoubtedly the proudest achievement becoming Northern Ireland's record goalscorer (his final tally of 36 goals is 16 clear of the nearest contender).

He's since made a seamless transition into management and since 2015 has been at the helm of boyhood club Linfield. More than a decade in the dugout at Windsor Park has seen Healy deliver six league titles and a crop of other trophies.

Inevitably, links have often cropped up with managerial posts in England and Scotland although he says he is in no rush to explore such options. Speaking ahead of an emotional reunion with Grant McCann's Rovers in a friendly in Belfast, he added: "I look at people like Grant, that have gone across to England and I speak to him quite frequently about various different things, about football and the challenges and everything else.

"So I'm not desperate to go and do this but if the correct opportunity eventually arises then it's something that I would certainly look at. But first and foremost, I've a job to do at Linfield."

And on Rovers, he is fully backing his old pal to continue to progress Rovers. Since his re-appointment in the summer of 2023, McCann has steered the club to year-on-year improvement, finishing fifth in League Two in 2023-24, then winning the title in 2024-25 and then consolidating in 14th spot in the third tier last time out. "I think even last season, in terms of points, I think Doncaster were safe from a long way out and that's good considering it was their first season back into League One," Healy adds.

"I've no doubt with the backing of the board and the support of fans that Grant can go on and hopefully have a strong and successful season this year and next."