In the summer of 2004, David McGoldrick followed his friend, Leon Best, from Notts County’s youth set-up to Southampton.

A bustling striker with a deceptively deft touch, he netted 44 goals for the Reserves and Under-18s, in his first season, including a hat-trick in the U-18 play-off Final, as the young Saints beat Aston Villa 3-2.

But he would have three loan spells over the next three seasons, during which he was not much used by George Burley or Nigel Pearson.

That all changed in 2008-09 when, with Rupert Lowe’s emphasis on Dutch managers giving youth its chance,

David featured in every Championship game – starting in all bar one of them –  top-scoring for a struggling side that failed to avoid relegation.

With the club now desperate for funds to survive the administration period, David’s departure was inevitable. For a fee of £1m, he returned to his native Nottingham, albeit to Forest rather than County. He chalked up more substitute appearances than starts for them in the Championship, but his career picked up again when he was loaned to newly-relegated Coventry in August 2012 – so much so that he was the leading League One marksman, with 16 goals, when he made a loan-move to second-tier Ipswich in January 2013, a move that became permanent in the summer.

After five solid, but injury disrupted years at Portman Rd and the wrong side of 30, now a free agent, he was offered a one-year contract by Chris Wilder, manager of Sheffield United and in 2018-19, in partnership with Billy Sharp, became their player-of-the-season as the Blades, aided by his 15 goals in 44 appearances, won promotion to the Premier League. It had been a long slog for him to reach the top but he had persevered stuck to his task and was rewarded by another contract that took him to the summer of 2021. He struggled for goals in the top flight, in fact come the suspension of football in March 2020 his tally was zero but he was still being talked up as a likely PoTS again. The Guardian said this of him in January 2010

“merely that McGoldrick is so exceptional that all the nifty things he does make not hitting the net forgivable. His movement is canny, his technique exquisite, his moxie inspirational. His ball control is magnetic and he is likely to dupe a defender with a clever pass as he is to blindside a midfielder with a precision challenge”.

He had been adopted as a baby and it wasn’t until he had tracked down his birth mother that he discovered he had an Irish grandfather. In November 2014, having finally been granted his Republic of Ireland passport he won his first Irish cap v the U.S.A. He went on to win 14 caps in all and his extended career had a romantic swan song to it when 19 years after leaving he returned to Nots County and he duly celebrated by scoring on his debut. In the summer of 2026 having spent a season at Barnsley and with his 39th birthday looming in the autumn he joined Nigel Clough’s Mansfield Town.