When Sean O'Driscoll took over at Doncaster in August 2006, Rovers were a decent League One side while Sheffield United were preparing for a season in the Premier League. If you had asked O'Driscoll whether he would take the Blades job under five years later, he would have presumably grinned and said (very, very quietly) "yes please". And yet he has now turned down the Blades to stay with one of the Championship's least fashionable clubs.
Doncaster have roughly half of Sheffield United's fanbase and a fraction of their heritage - at any other point in the history of football, this move would be a no-brainer. For some managers, this would still be a no-brainer. Managing at Bramall Lane offers a media spotlight that will never be available at Doncaster unless they somehow find themselves - against Blackpool-sized odds - in the Premier League. In the simplest of terms, leaving Doncaster for Sheffield United is a step up the managerial ladder.
Forget about league position - when Simon Grayson left Blackpool for Leeds and Nigel Adkins left Scunthorpe for Southampton, they left for bigger clubs in a lowlier league position. You could have forgiven O'Driscoll for doing the same. But thankfully, the very quiet O'Driscoll (who has few friends in the media because of his prickly, mumbling style) is more intelligent than the average football manager and has chosen a well-run unfashionable club over a financial basket case of a higher-profile club.
While Doncaster have become a debt-free financial model for a small club, Sheffield United recently announced annual losses of £18.7million in the year following the end of the Premier League parachute payments. They have had to scale down their operation, selling their stake in Chinese club Chengdu Blades and the Copthorne Hotel that is attached to Bramall Lane. They now have ambitious plans to be debt-free by 2013 that means money for transfers will be negligible in the foreseeable future.
O'Driscoll is the kind of man who would have known all this even before he sat down to talk to representatives of Sheffield United. He is also the kind of man who knows that eventually his managerial talents will take him to a bigger stage than Doncaster Rovers. But he will also know that he can afford to wait for a club that's not in need of financial CPR.
As neutrals, there's something refreshing about a footballing figure making a decision based on long-term thinking rather than short-term gain. He could easily have taken the Blades job for more money and more kudos, but he is in the fifth year of a project at the Keepmoat Stadium which has seen them established in the Championship despite playing a brand of football many considered too airy-fairy for a competitive/agricultural division.
It's a shame for Blades fans who have endured some frankly horrible football for pretty much the whole of living memory, but there's a small band of supporters elsewhere in South Yorkshire that should be very proud of their club and their manager.
Sarah Winterburn
