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Frank McDougall

Scottish professional footballer (1958–2023)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ3082715 ↗
Source-derived summary

Douglas Francis McDougall (21 February 1958 – 1 October 2023) was a Scottish professional footballer who played as a striker for Clydebank, St Mirren and Aberdeen in the 1970s and 1980s.

Playing career

Early career

McDougall was brought up in the Cadder neighbourhood of Glasgow and, in his teens, showed promise as a boxer. His first involvement in professional football came after Hearts manager Bobby Seith saw him in a local amateur game and signed him on a schoolboy form for the Edinburgh club.

McDougall's progress at Hearts was interrupted after an incident on a bus left him hospitalised for six months while his damaged eyesight was repaired. He later dropped to Junior level with Duntocher Hibs and Glasgow Perthshire, and despite an unsuccessful trial with Partick Thistle, signed for Clydebank in 1978.

After scoring 28 goals in the 1978–79 season for Clydebank, he was bought by St Mirren for £150,000. This was a record transfer between two Scottish clubs at the time.

Aberdeen

Aberdeen signed McDougall in 1984 from St Mirren for a transfer fee of £100,000. His 22 league goals (24 in all competitions) in his first season made him the top scorer in the Scottish Premier Division, and helped The Dons win the league championship. McDougall scored a hat-trick as Aberdeen clinched the championship with a 3–0 win at Hearts on 4 May 1985.

Editorial summary

“Frank McDougall” enters the record as scottish professional footballer (1958–2023). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, McDougall and Scottish can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 2023, 1978, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1958-02-21. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Frank, McDougall and Scottish.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Frank McDougall” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Frank, McDougall and Scottish provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3082715. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2023, 1978 and 1984.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frank McDougall”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frank McDougall primary sources, Frank McDougall archive and Frank research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Frank McDougall”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Frank McDougall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.