Frank McDougall
Scottish professional footballer (1958–2023)

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.
“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.
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“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.
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.
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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.