Doncaster's Joe Ironside: ‘Playing non-league has made me appreciate life now'

The Guardian

10-02-2025

Subscribers to the theory that the FA Cup has lost its magic have clearly never met Joe Ironside. It is now more than three years since the Doncaster striker experienced one of the very best days of his life when he scored the winning goal for his former team Cambridge United in a wildly celebrated third-round upset at Newcastle.
'What a day, what a really special day,' says Ironside as he looks forward to Crystal Palace's visit to South Yorkshire for Monday night's fourth-round tie. 'The celebrations afterwards are something I'm going to remember for a lifetime but, although my memories are all happy, the game itself is a bit of a blur. The one thing I can remember was the VAR check for offside after I'd scored. It was only about three minutes but it felt so long.'
Ironside's interception of a loose ball Eddie Howe's defence had failed to clear prefaced an unerring finish that not merely prompted Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Newcastle's unsmiling chair, to march, taut-faced, into the home dressing room flanked by four bodyguards at the final whistle, but caught the eye of the striker's boyhood hero.
'I grew up idolising Alan Shearer,' says Ironside. 'And before the third round got drawn that year I was telling everyone we were going to get Newcastle at St James' Park and it all came about. And then Alan Shearer rang me a couple of days after the game and we talked on Zoom. He was complimentary about myself and the team. It was a really nice touch.'
Should Ironside help Grant McCann's League Two promotion contenders knock Palace out, he can expect a message from an old friend in Manchester, who had his own FA Cup moment on Friday night. 'Harry Maguire and I started out in the academy at Sheffield United and we're still in touch,' says the 31-year-old. 'It's always good to see Harry, what a career he's had, he's achieved absolutely amazing things.'
When Ironside scored Sheffield United's consolation goal in the 2011 FA Youth Cup final against Manchester United the sky seemed the limit for the first-year academy scholar. Yet while Maguire eventually joined the Old Trafford payroll and progressed to playing centre-half for England, the striker he used to test himself against in training descended into non-league football.
'Sometimes football's about being in the right place at the right time, having the right manager at the right moment, that's just how it is,' says Ironside. 'Dropping into non-league was difficult but it was with the aim of playing regularly and getting back into the Football League. But I loved it. I wouldn't change a thing.'
After making 16 first-team appearances at Sheffield United Ironside signed for Alfreton in 2015, moving on to Nuneaton, Kidderminster and York before joining Macclesfield, then in League Two, in 2019. A year later he was bound for Cambridge United, helping them win promotion to League One, and arrived in Doncaster in June 2023. Since then he has scored 30 goals in 94 games.
'I was lucky enough to get back into the Football League but I'm grateful for the experiences I had outside it,' he says. 'Playing non-league has definitely made me appreciate my life now. You appreciate all the things that are done for players at league clubs these days.'
Ultimately Ironside hopes to remain in the professional sphere as a coach or manager but, with an eight-month-old son now part of his family, he is exploring plan Bs and sacrifices considerable free time to not only collecting his coaching badges but studying part-time for a university degree in sports business management. 'I'm trying to create more options for the future,' he says. 'It's good to do different things but football's always the main focus.'
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Never more so than on Monday night, when Ironside and his co-striker, the former Sheffield United veteran Billy Sharp, will aim to ask England's Marc Guéhi and his fellow Palace defenders questions they struggle to answer.
The 39-year-old Sharp – often a highly effective impact substitute nowadays – and Ironside car-share on the journey between their homes in Sheffield and Doncaster. 'We talk a lot,' says the latter. 'But more about life in general than football.'
That might change during Monday morning's drive east across the M18 to the 15,000-capacity Eco-Power Stadium. 'Palace have all top players so to be able to share a pitch with people like Marc Guéhi is exciting. It's definitely something to look forward to,' says Ironside. 'But we've got a lot of experience throughout our squad and it's the FA Cup so anything can happen.'
Palace would certainly be unwise to underestimate a team riding high in the fourth tier. After all McCann's side includes talented loanees in the Manchester United winger Ethan Ennis and the West Ham midfielder Patrick Kelly. Then there's Teddy Sharman-Lowe, on loan from Chelsea and a former England Under-20s goalkeeper, and the defender Joseph Olowu, who came through Arsenal's youth system.
'I think this tie has really caught people's imaginations in Doncaster,' says Ironside. 'It's a cliche but that's the beauty of the FA Cup. When you're a League Two club that draws a Premier League side it does galvanise the city. It's going to be a great occasion with a bumper crowd and, if Billy Sharp and I can do our jobs, our team's got a chance.'