After a bricklaying apprenticeship on leaving school, Dave Penny has come along way since his days in non-league football. Craig Stoddart reports on how he is now building a reputation as one of football's best young managers.

There is nothing like a good cup shock to launch a lower league club into the national spotlight and last season Doncaster Rovers rose to prominence with two of the very best.

In front of the Sky cameras, Aston Villa and Manchester City were both humbled at Belle Vue in archetypal examples of a top club being beaten in less-than-salubrious surroundings.

It could have been an incredible hat-trick but Arsenal avoided a penalty shoot-out with a last-minute winner in extra-time.

Dave Penney, the Doncaster manager, had already built a solid reputation by leading Rovers to back-to-back promotions from the Conference to League One, but beating City and Villa in the League Cup cemented his place in the nation's psyche.

He went on to lead Rovers to their highest league finish in 50 years and it was considered somewhat of a coup when Darlington appointed him as manager last month.

Having surprisingly left Doncaster earlier this season, his name was linked to the likes of Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday, but Quakers got there first to make him their successor to David Hodgson.

Today, after six wins out of six, Penney, 42, takes charge of his seventh Darlington game against, as FA Cup fortune would have it, Swansea City, the club with whom he enjoyed one of his best days in the competition as a player.

A decade before masterminding the downfalls of City and Villa, the first giant-killing of Penney's career came at Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park, where the midfielder rifled home a 20-yard winner to secure a 2-1 replay victory and a fourth-round tie at Newcastle United.

Although hardly remembered as one of the competition's major upsets, at the time Boro were leading the way in Division One (now the Championship) while Swansea were mid-table a division below. For Penney, at the age of 30, it was his first major goal in the FA Cup.

"I can't remember much about the first game, it was 1-1 at the Vetch and I think it was a boring match. The draw was made and everyone expected Middlesbrough to go through and play a derby against Newcastle.

"But we went to Ayresome Park and played very well. Steve Torpey scored first and I got one from 20 yards, so that was one of my better cup games. It was a good night that and Newcastle was too, even though we lost.

"We actually started quite well and had a few chances to score. If one of them had gone in then you never know what might have happened, we could have ended up beating Middlesbrough and Newcastle on their own grounds."

That was about as good as it got in the FA Cup for Penney in an unremarkable career which did not begin until he was 21 - after starting in non-league - and also took in the likes of Derby County, Oxford United and Cardiff City.

Some ten years later, at Doncaster, he began to really build a reputation for himself.

But it was building of a different nature that saw Castleford-born Penney begin his football career by taking every Monday off training at Derby so he could complete a six-year bricklaying apprenticeship with Wakefield Metropolitan and District Council.

Born 42 years ago in what was, and still is, very much a rugby league town, Penney used to operate the scoreboard at Castleford RLC in return for a free season ticket, but always preferred playing sport with his feet rather than his hands.

"I don't think I was big enough really," Penney says. "All my mates from school went on to play semi-pro at Leeds and Bradford, they were bigger than me.

"We had to play it at school, I was invariably a scrum-half or on the wing but I never took to it, I was too little and kept getting bashed. I enjoyed it but not as much as football."

Having left school "wanting to be a footballer like everybody else", he intended to follow his dad into the coal mines. "He ripped the application form up. He didn't want me going down there," says Penney who instead ended up becoming a brickie while playing for Fryston Colliery Welfare and then Pontefract Colliery in the North-East Counties League.

Spotted by a Derby scout during an away game in Derbyshire one Thursday night in 1985, by Saturday the bricklayer had become a footballer.

But the bricklaying skills have stayed with him and came in useful recently

"I do bits and bobs around the house. When I was between jobs after Doncaster I kept busy at home, I was re-pointing the house when Darlington offered me the job.

"Arsene Wenger probably couldn't do it, he probably wouldn't need to either because he'll have enough money to get someone to do it for him!

"I did enjoy the bricklaying to be honest. When you've finished you stand back and have a look at what you've done and you get a sense of achievement.

"I represented the college in bricklaying competitions. Every year they would name the top ten apprentices in each year group and I was always in that. I always think you should try your best in everything you do.

"By the last year of the bricklaying apprenticeship I was a footballer at Derby so I got Mondays off to finish the course.

"I was five years down the line of a six-year course and I was 21 when I got a two-year contract at Derby so it was important I carried on and got that qualification, just in case."

Although he never had to revert to his previous trade, Penney was only a peripheral figure at the Baseball Ground, where he made just 19 appearances in four years, though some of them came in the top-flight.

"For two years I hardly played. I couldn't even tell you who my debut was against. I was just learning the trade I suppose," says Penney. "Initially you enjoy being a footballer, even though I wasn't playing. But, like any job, after a while it got boring and mundane."

At 25 and having effectively undergone a second apprenticeship while in Derby's reserves, a move away beckoned, with Oxford paying £175,000 and offering a three-year deal.

Despite being at the Manor Ground for five seasons and making 70 appearances, Penney played in only three FA Cup ties, although one included a goal against Sunderland in 1992.

One of the other Cup appearances came against Swansea, who Penney was to join, aged 30, in 1994.

Three successful years at the Vetch, the highlights of which were those FA Cup clashes with Boro and the Magpies, saw Penney become captain and a regular goalscorer alongside the bulky Jan Molby - "He was carrying a bit of weight but we could give him the ball and he could ping it anywhere".

Despite being captain and leading scorer in 1996/97, which culminated in a Division Three Wembley play-off final defeat to Northampton, his days at Swansea ended acrimoniously after being asked to take a 20 per cent pay cut. He moved to Welsh rivals Cardiff City, a move that did not go down well among fans of either club.

"I left Swansea as captain and became captain at Cardiff straight away, so I wasn't very popular in the whole of South Wales," he says.

"Nobody liked me at Swansea for going to Cardiff and nobody liked me in Cardiff because I'd been captain at Swansea!"

A year later in 1998 and Penney, 13 years after leaving Castleford for Derby, moved back home when he joined Doncaster Rovers in the Conference, where he remained a player for three years before becoming manager in 2001/02, leading them to two promotions in his first two full seasons.

But, as with much of his playing career, cup luck evaded Penney until those memorable wins last season.

"I wouldn't say I'm lucky in cups, certainly not if you look at my record prior to last season," he said.

"We always seemed to get away draws at Doncaster so I wouldn't buy into that,'' he said.

"Last season's wins might have raised my profile to the public but at boardroom level I think two promotions on your CV is better than a cup run.

"But the cup runs did raise the profile of the club and make some money. Three games were televised, which made about half a million.

"I'm aware they are good for finances so it would be nice to have a run with Darlington."