Duncan Shearer

Duncan Nichol Shearer (born 28 August 1962 in Fort William) is a former Scottish footballer and the brother of fellow former Highland Football League and Inverness Clachnacuddin FC, and English League player Dave Shearer. He played shinty as well as football as a youth.

Playing career

Shearer began his career as a twenty-year-old striker at Highland Football League club Inverness Clachnacuddin FC. From there, he moved to Chelsea in 1983, before going on to play for a number of English clubs including Huddersfield, Swindon Town and Blackburn Rovers. While playing in the Highland League with Clachnaccudin, Alex Ferguson, then Aberdeen manager, had watched Shearer on several occasion and subsequently invited him to play in an Aberdeen Reserve match on a Wednesday evening at Pittodrie. However, early in the afternoon of the match, the Chairman of Clachnuccuddin received a telephone call from Aberdeen FC to inform Shearer that the Aberdeen reserve match that evening had been cancelled. The Chairman had to rush down to Inverness Railway Station and haul Shearer off the early afternoon train from Inverness to Aberdeen. No further invite for a trial at Aberdeen FC was forthcoming.

He left Chelsea at the end of the 1985–86 season after only appearing in two League games for the London club (scoring one goal) and signed to Second Division Huddersfield, scoring a hat-trick in his first full game for the club (A 3–1 win against Barnsley) and was top goalscorer for 1986–87 and 1987–1988 whilst also being named the team's Player of the Year for 1987 and being including in the publication Huddersfield Town F.C. - The Fans' Favourites on the club's centenary in 2008.

However, he was unable to prevent Huddersfield's relegation to the Third Division at the end of the 1987-88 season. Just weeks before, unrelated English striker Alan Shearer (aged 17) had scored a hat-trick in the First Division for Southampton against Arsenal, whose captain Tony Adams missed the game through injury. In his autobiography 11 years later, Adams revealed that he had followed the progress of the game on Ceefax and mistakingly believed that the Shearer who scored a hat-trick against Arsenal was Duncan Shearer.

He was approached by Lou Macari and offered a club record fee of £250,000 to join Swindon in 1988 to fill the striker position left following Dave Bamber and Jimmy Quinn exiting the Wiltshire club.^[1] In his first season he was sidelined due to an injured foot and later a groin strain but managed to score 14 goals in the 45 League games he took part in and was the club's top scorer for that season.^[1] In the 1989–90 season he scored 21 League goals for Swindon as well as the winner in the playoff semi-final against Blackburn Rovers and was part of the team that won promotion at Wembley only to be demoted due to financial irregularities at the club.^[1] In all he was top scorer for Swindon in every season he was at the club and was named in the PFA Team of the Year for Division One before being bought by Blackburn Rovers manager Kenny Dalglish in 1992 for £800,000.^[2] He only played six games for Blackburn before returning to Scotland at the end of the season.^[1]

In 1992 the powerfully-built forward signed for Aberdeen at a price of £500,000 where he made the biggest impression and was nicknamed "Deadly Dunc" for his strike-rate. He formed partnerships with other strikers such as Eoin Jess, Scott Booth and Billy Dodds during his time at Pittodrie, and made 116 full league appearances, scoring fifty-three goals. In 1995 he won the Scottish League Cup with Aberdeen. He also appeared in the 1993 Scottish Cup Final, when the Dons were beaten 2-1 by Rangers.

At the age of 35 he joined Inverness Caledonian Thistle in 1997, where he played for two and a half seasons, notching up forty-eight appearances and nineteen goals.

International career

During his playing career Shearer was capped 7 times for Scotland between 1994 and 1995, scoring 2 goals.

Management career

In season 1999-00 he began to concentrate more on coaching than playing, and was in the dugout when Caley Thistle famously beat Celtic 3-1 in the Scottish Cup.

In 2000, having by then retired from playing, he became assistant to then Caley Thistle manager Steve Paterson following the departure of former assistant manager Alex Caldwell to Elgin City. In December 2002 both Paterson and Shearer left Caley Thistle to take up management roles at Aberdeen. However, this did not prove to be a happy homecoming for Shearer, as Aberdeen struggled in the SPL and were put out of the Scottish Cup at the fourth round stage by Livingston. Steve Paterson and Duncan Shearer left the club in 2004.

Shearer was appointed as manager of Highland League side Buckie Thistle in October 2004. During Shearer's reign as manager he managed to win the Aberdeenshire Cup twice and the Aberdeenshire Shield once. On 20 April 2008, he was sacked as manager of Buckie Thistle after a disappointing home defeat to Cove Rangers which all but ended Thistle's hopes of winning the Highland Football League championship.^[3]

Shearer then became a youth coach at Caley Thistle. Shearer and Scott Kellacher were put in charge of the first team after manager Terry Butcher moved to Hibernian in November 2013.^[4]

Notes

External links

Duncan Shearer career stats at Soccerbase