Duncan Shearer

Duncan Shearer

Personal information
Full name	Duncan Nichol Shearer
Date of birth	28 August 1962 (1962-08-28) (age 49)
Place of birth	Fort William, Scotland
Height	1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Playing position	Forward
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps†	(Gls)†
1982	Clachnacuddin	?	(?)
1983–1986	Chelsea	2	(1)
1986–1988	Huddersfield Town	83	(38)
1988–1992	Swindon Town	159	(78)
1992	Blackburn Rovers	6	(1)
1992–1997	Aberdeen	157	(53)
1997–2000	Inverness Caledonian Thistle	55	(17)
National team
1994–1995	Scotland	7	(2)
Teams managed
2004–2008	Buckie Thistle
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. † Appearances (Goals).

Duncan Nichol Shearer (born on 28 August 1962 in Fort William) is a former Scottish footballer and the brother of fellow former 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 League club Clachnacuddin. 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.

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 teams 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 clubs 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 Scottish Cup final in 1993, 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. 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.

Management career

Shearer later retired from playing and in 2000 he became assistant to then Caley Thistle manager Steve Paterson after 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.

On 20 April 2008, he was sacked as manager of Buckie Thistle, just one day after a disappointing home defeat to Cove Rangers which all but ended Thistle's hopes of winning the league championship.

During Shearer's reign as manager he managed to win the Aberdeenshire Cup twice and the Aberdeenshire Shield once but in the end it was his failure to win the league which led to his sacking.^[3]

International career

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

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Mattick, Dick (2002). Swindon Town Football Club 100 Greats. Stroud: Tempus Publishing. p. 99. ISBN 0752427148. 
2. ^ "Duncan Shearer". Player Profile. swindon-town-fc.co.uk. http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/Person.asp?PersonID=SHEARERD. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 
3. ^ "Duncanson treble blows title race wide open". The Highland News. 21 April 2008. http://www.highland-news.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/3629/Duncanson_treble_blows_title_race_wide_open.html. Retrieved 2008-04-21. "Duncan Shearer was sacked as Buckie manager 24 hours after his side's 2-1 defeat [by Cove Rangers F.C.]." 

External links

Duncan Shearer career stats at Soccerbase

Persondata
Name	Shearer, Duncan
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	28 August 1962
Place of birth	Fort William, Scotland
Date of death
Place of death