Dougan, (Alexander) Derek (1938–2007), footballer and author, was born 20 January 1938 at 41 Susan Street in the Newtownards Road district of east Belfast, the eldest of six children (three boys and three girls) of John 'Jackie' Dougan, a boilermaker at the Harland & Wolff shipyard, and his wife Josephine 'Josie' (née Kitchen). Educated at Mersey Street primary school and Belfast Technical High School, on leaving school he worked in the Tri-ang toy factory for over a year. He then became an apprentice electrician at Harland & Wolff (1955–7) but found the daily toil mundane and repetitive, and football became his favourite escape. He played with Cregagh Boys (1951–4) and won schoolboy caps for Northern Ireland.
Distillery to Leicester, 1954–67 In 1954 he joined Irish League club Distillery (then based in west Belfast). He made 76 league appearances for Distillery, playing in defence and attack, scoring 17 goals, briefly captained the team, and in May 1956 helped them to beat Glentoran 1–0 to win the Irish Cup. During this time he also won amateur international caps for Northern Ireland.
Attracting the attention of several cross-channel clubs, in August 1957 he was offered professional terms by first-division Portsmouth. Anxious to get away from Belfast since the death from cancer of his much-loved mother in 1955, he jumped at the chance. On 19 October 1957, at the age of 19, he made his senior debut against Manchester United at Old Trafford and acquitted himself well in a 3–0 victory over the reigning champions. Although Dougan's preferred position was centre-half, his manager saw him as a goal scorer, and played him mostly at centre-forward. In two years with Portsmouth he made 33 league appearances and scored nine goals, but found it difficult to settle at the club, which struggled to avoid relegation. He railed against authority, criticised the training regime and team tactics, and gained the reputation of a rebel. Dougan chafed against the conservative and conformist culture of English professional football in which players were expected to defer without question to managers and directors, and even as a young player his readiness to speak his mind set him apart.
Transferred to Blackburn Rovers for £15,000 in March 1959, he made 59 appearances and scored 26 league goals in his two years there, but never really took to Blackburn, finding it a dour club in a dour town, and asked for a transfer on the eve of the 1960 FA Cup final against Wolves. Although injured, he declared himself fit and limped through a game that Blackburn lost 3–0; many at the club never forgave Dougan for letting them down.
Moving to Aston Villa in August 1961, he missed much of the first season because of a broken arm sustained in a serious car accident in September 1961, but still made 59 league appearances and scored 19 goals in his two years there. On joining the club he shaved his head to give himself a fresh start, and began to earn the reputation of a man about town. Dougan's flamboyance and battling performances made him popular with supporters, but Villa manager Joe Mercer considered him unreliable and left him out of the 1963 League Cup final, which Villa lost 3–1 on aggregate to local rivals Birmingham City.
Seeing no future at Villa, Dougan moved to third-division Peterborough United for £21,000 in the summer of 1963. In July 1963 he had married Jutta Fichtl, originally from Munich, whom he met when she was working as an au pair in Birmingham; they had two sons, Alexander and Nicholas. Many were surprised that a talented player in his mid-twenties should be willing to drop two divisions, but Dougan suited the club's ambitious and brash image, and the financial terms offered were attractive to a newly married man. Again he stayed for just two years, playing in 77 league games and scoring 19 goals. Peterborough reached the quarter-final of the FA Cup in 1965 but remained in the third division. Dougan discovered that the national media played little attention to the lower leagues and, having lost his place with Northern Ireland, craved a return to the top flight.
In May 1965 he signed for first-division Leicester City for £25,000. At Leicester he matured as a player, scoring goals regularly and becoming a great favourite with the fans. Again he stayed for just two seasons, playing 68 times and scoring an impressive 35 league goals. However he believed he was poorly rewarded for his efforts and fell out with manager Matt Gillies.
Wolves, 1967–75 In April 1967 Dougan joined Wolverhampton Wanderers, then in the second division, for a fee of £50,000. By moving clubs every couple of years he had earned the reputation of a roving mercenary, but he remained at Wolves for eight years, became closely attached to the club, and lived in Wolverhampton for most of the rest of his life. Brashly announcing that he would be out of the top division for only eleven games, he marked his home debut on 25 March 1967 with a hat trick against Hull City (including an audacious volley), and scored another six as he helped Wolves gain promotion. He was Wolves' leading scorer in the 1967–8, 1968–9 and 1971–2 seasons, making 258 league appearances and scoring 95 league goals (1967–75) (in total he made 323 senior appearances and scored 123 goals for Wolves). While at Wolves he surpassed the goal-scoring record of Peter Doherty (qv) to become the top-scoring Irishman in English league football, and his career total of 222 league goals in 546 appearances remains a record for an Irish player in England. Throughout his professional club career he scored 280 goals in 648 senior appearances.
Dougan was the outstanding personality in a talented Wolves team that played exciting football, but lacked the consistency to challenge for league titles. In his time, their best finish was fourth in 1970–71, which qualified them for the newly created UEFA Cup. In September 1971 in a UEFA Cup game against Académica of Portugal, Dougan scored a hat trick (the only Wolves player to do so in a major European competition). Wolves subsequently eliminated Juventus and Ferencváros before losing the two-legged final 3–2 to Tottenham Hotspur in May 1972. Dougan was at his best during this European campaign, unsettling continental defenders with his direct physical style, and was the tournament's top scorer in 1971–2 with nine goals. (His tally of 12 goals in all European competitions is a club record for Wolves and for a player from Northern Ireland). Despite his goal-scoring feats, success (other than winning mid-season tournaments in the USA in 1967 and 1969 and the inaugural Texaco Cup in 1971) eluded him until, at the age of 36, he won the only major trophy in his eighteen-year-long career in England when Wolves beat Manchester City 2–1 at Wembley to win the League Cup in March 1974. Dougan played his last league game for Wolves on 26 April 1975, appearing as a substitute in a 1–1 draw with Leeds, and on 20 October 1975 was honoured with a testimonial against a Don Revie Select XI at Molineux, attended by 25,658 spectators.
During these years 'The Doog' (as he was commonly known), with his distinctive loping stride and swashbuckling style, cut a unique figure on the pitch and was idolised by Wolves supporters. Seeing the fans as an audience to be entertained, he revelled in their adulation, playing to the crowd and celebrating his goals exuberantly. But he was much more than a showman, and trained diligently and worked hard to become one of the most feared strikers in the English game. Standing 6ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall and rangily built, he was a superb target man, bravely winning the ball in the air and creating numerous chances with his clever flicks and lay-offs for goal-poaching colleagues such as John Richards. He was also an accomplished player on the ground, with good ball control, blistering pace and a lethal left foot. As a target man he took a lot of punishment, collecting more than 200 stitches in assorted head and facial wounds. He met the game's hard men head-on and could commit some nasty fouls himself, collecting his share of bookings and dismissals, many for showing dissent to officials. His reputation often told against him, and he served a two-month ban from October 1969 after being sent off twice in three weeks.
Like all strong personalities, Dougan divided opinion: some found him intelligent, persuasive and charming, others thought him arrogant, argumentative and rude. Such an opinionated individualist did not always fit easily into the team. Once during a pre-match kick-about a Wolves player drove a ball towards Dougan that knocked him unconscious; far from being concerned, most of his teammates stood around laughing. The Wolves manager Bill McGarry, a strict disciplinarian, regarded him as a publicity-seeker and a troublemaker and the two men heartily disliked each other. Fortunately for Dougan, his club chairman John Ireland was a great admirer and refused to part with him, believing him to be irreplaceable.
International career, 1958–73 After promising performances for Portsmouth and the Northern Ireland B team (he scored three in a 6–0 victory against Romania B on 23 October 1957), Dougan was included in the Northern Ireland squad for the 1958 World Cup tournament in Sweden. On 8 June 1958, with the first-choice centre-forward injured, he made his full international debut in the opening game against Czechoslovakia, which Northern Ireland won 1–0. Aged only 20, he was somewhat out of his depth at this level and made no further appearances in the tournament, in which Northern Ireland reached the quarter-finals. For the next few years he played intermittently for his country, scoring in a 2–0 away victory over Poland on 10 October 1962 in a European Nations Cup qualifying match. After that he lost his international place for almost three years owing to injury and his move to third-division Peterborough, but returned on 2 October 1965 to score against Scotland in a 3–2 home championship win. From then until his last game against Cyprus on 14 February 1973 he was a regular international. He won 43 caps for Northern Ireland and scored eight goals. Captain from 1969 to 1973, he led the team that beat England 1–0 on 23 May 1972 in the home championship (their first win at Wembley in fifteen years). However, these were generally lean years for a Northern Ireland team that lacked strength in depth and failed to qualify for any major tournaments during the 1960s and '70s.
The poor showing of the Northern Ireland and Republic teams, and the hope that football could heal some of the island's political and sectarian divisions, led Dougan to propose the establishment of an all-Ireland team. With John Giles and Louis Kilcoyne he helped organise a team drawn from north and south to play Brazil in Dublin on 3 July 1973. The president of the IFA, Harry Cavan, responded coolly to the proposed game and refused to sanction it, and the Irish side played as a Shamrock Rovers XI rather than an All-Ireland XI. They performed well, losing 4–3 to the world champions in an exciting match (Dougan scored the Irish team's second goal) that drew a crowd of over 30,000. The game helped promote the notion of an all-Ireland team among some players and supporters, but most administrators (north and south) were opposed, and the ongoing political troubles in Northern Ireland stymied any initiatives related to Irish unity. From the time he broached the matter in February 1973, Dougan never again played for Northern Ireland and was convinced that Cavan had vetoed his selection.
Public figure By the latter stage of his playing career, Dougan had become a well-known public figure. He led a colourful social life, appeared regularly in the media, and was voted 'best dressed man' by Tailor and Cutter magazine in 1972. He recognised that a footballer's career was short and uncertain, and was intent on making a name for himself. Confident and articulate, he enjoyed giving interviews, and his outspoken views were a magnet to journalists. While still playing he embarked on a media career, hosting a sports programme for Radio Birmingham, writing a column for the TV Times, and appearing on the ITV World Cup panels in 1970 and 1974. Featuring provocative figures such as Dougan, Malcolm Allison and Brian Clough, these panels transformed television football coverage and made the post-match analysis and arguments an essential part of the experience. Such exposure made him a national figure and on 16 January 1974 he was a guest on ITV's This is your life introduced by Eamonn Andrews (qv).
Dougan wrote several books (usually dictated to ghost writers), which included the autobiographical works Attack (1969), The sash he never wore (1972) and Doog (1980). Laced with literary allusions and persistent moralising, they differ markedly from the usual sporting memoirs. He also wrote a novel, The footballer (1974), which told the story of Danny Stone, a talented and charismatic player who, despite his battles against a dour and unimaginative manager, became a star striker with Branton United and England, and the idol of the fans. The book was chosen as the bestseller of the week in the Irish Times and the reviewer described Dougan as a 'gifted man' and was 'grateful that he has not restricted his talents to the soccer field' (10 August 1974).
In his memoirs and works such as On the spot (1974), How not to run football (1981) and Matches of the day 1958–83 (1984), Dougan was an acute critic of the ills of English football and advocated some visionary solutions. He compared professional footballers to cattle that were bought and sold, complaining that most were underpaid, subjected to restrictive contracts, and forced to play too many games, and that they received inadequate medical treatment (he himself played with serious ankle and back injuries that went undiagnosed). In a period of rampant hooliganism and falling attendances, Dougan argued that football needed investment and innovative thinking but had little hope that this would come from club directors and FA administrators, whom he dismissed as self-seeking amateurs, riding on the backs of players. He believed that the days had passed when crowds were prepared to be herded together on crumbling and unsafe terraces, and advocated the building of modern all-seater stadiums that could be used as multi-sport leisure facilities and become focal points for local communities. Arguing (with some prescience) that by showing only edited highlights football had yet to harness fully the power of television, he recommended reducing the first division to twenty teams and staggering fixtures so that important games could be televised live. He predicted that this would multiply the money that clubs earned from television rights, advertising and sponsorship, which could then be used to improve facilities and players' pay.
Dougan criticised the defensive and sterile nature of much professional football and advocated rule changes to encourage attacking play, such as abolishing the offside rule and adopting a points-for-goals system. He was sceptical of the value of FA coaching badges and claimed that all too often players were over-coached, destroying their personality and individualism, and robbing the game of excitement and spontaneity: a damning indictment of modern football was its failure to accommodate the wayward genius of his Northern Ireland teammate George Best (qv). Dougan believed that Best had been hounded out of the game, and the cover of his How not to run football featured a picture of a crucified Best. In December 2005 he was one of the pallbearers at Best's funeral in Belfast.
In 1967 Dougan joined the committee of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) and within three years became chairman (1970–78). In March 1974 he helped inaugurate the PFA awards for outstanding players. Determined to improve footballers' contractual position, he proved himself a tenacious negotiator in achieving abolition of the antiquated system whereby clubs could hold a player's registration and prevent him from moving to a new club. A significant measure of freedom of contract was finally conceded in April 1978, allowing a player to negotiate his own terms on completing his contract, radically improving his options and earning capacity. Some former players, notably Danny Blanchflower (qv), criticised Dougan for using the PFA chairmanship as a platform for self-promotion, but although he undoubtedly enjoyed the position's prestige, Dougan was also motivated by a genuine desire to improve the status of professional footballers. Many young players recalled his kindness to them and, long after leaving the PFA, he showed great concern for ex-players who had fallen on hard times. In 2005 he helped set up Xpro, an organisation dedicated to improving the welfare of former footballers.
Later career, 1975–2007 On leaving Wolves in summer 1975, Dougan became chief executive and player-manager at Kettering Town in the Southern Premier League. Intent on developing the club as part of the wider community, he had many new ideas: in January 1976 was the first to introduce shirt sponsorship, but was forced to cancel it by the FA, which did little to improve his opinions of football administrators. This left the club in serious financial difficulty and he resigned on 23 August 1977.
After working as a football commentator with Yorkshire Television, Dougan became involved in efforts to rescue Wolves, which, having built an expensive new stand and over-spent on players, were £2.5 million in debt and in danger of going into receivership. A consortium led by Dougan and backed by the Bhatti brothers, property developers from Manchester, managed to avert disaster only three minutes ahead of the receiver's deadline on 30 July 1982. Dougan took over as chairman and chief executive and promised to rejuvenate the club, but the finance to support his ambitious plans was not made available, and the club went into free-fall, tumbling through the divisions in 1984, 1985 and 1986 to end up in the fourth division for the first time in its history. As frontman for the Bhattis, Dougan received much of the blame for the club's decline and his reputation as a Wolves legend was tarnished. This was a particularly unhappy and acrimonious time during which he fell out with many people at the club, some of them former teammates, and was excluded from the Wolves ex-players' association. He drank heavily and was involved in several aggressive confrontations at post-match functions. In January 1985 he was forced to resign, and around this time his marriage broke up because of his repeated infidelities.
Dougan's involvement with football was largely peripheral after his resignation from Wolves. Journalists no longer sought out his views as before, and he struggled to come to terms with the decline in his media profile. He worked in PR and marketing, and continued to raise money for charities such as the Mental Health Research Fund. Always looking out for a new cause, he began fund-raising for the 'Duncan Edwards Sports Medical Centre', a modern facility for the treatment and rehabilitation of sports injuries to be built at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, West Midlands (Edwards's birthplace). Dougan wrote the foreword to a promotional booklet, Duncan Edwards (1988), and gained considerable publicity for the venture, but it was not a success. By 1989 the fund had raised only £90,000, with £70,000 spent on expenses.
From the late 1980s, Dougan spent increasing amounts of time in Belfast and lived there for much of the 1990s. He had a major heart attack in January 1997, and was afterwards troubled by serious cardiac problems. In May 1997 he stood as an independent candidate in Belfast East in the Westminster election, but his message of cross-community cooperation had little appeal and he won only 541 votes (1.4 per cent of the poll) and lost his deposit. It seems that he stood at least partly to gain publicity for his new book, The sash he never wore twenty-five years on (1997), an updated edition of the earlier work. In this Dougan distanced himself from the traditional unionism of his east Belfast protestant background and declared his abhorrence of sectarianism. He had many catholic friends and married a catholic, and believed that it made little sense for a small country like Ireland to be divided. During his years in England he had observed how Irish footballers got on well together regardless of their different political and religious backgrounds. With a peace process in place, he looked to the future with hope and believed that integrated education and sporting unity could play important roles in bringing people together. Unionists tended to regard his views as naïve at best and treacherous at worst, and his image on murals in east Belfast was occasionally defaced.
In 2005 he joined the United Kingdom Independence Party, having decided that traditional political parties had little interest in the welfare of ordinary people and that the UK should withdraw from the EU. He canvassed for the party in the West Midlands in the 2005 general election, and in June 2006 appeared on BBC TV's Question time as a UKIP representative.
Dougan died from a heart attack on 24 June 2007 at his home in Stockwell End, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton. The funeral service was held in the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Wolverhampton on 5 July 2007 and was attended by many former teammates and friends such as Denis Law, John Giles, Terry Conroy, Pat Jennings and Martin O'Neill. His coffin was decorated with the Wolves colours and crest and fans lined the streets surrounding the church. He was cremated at Bushbury Crematorium, Wolverhampton.
Dougan stamped his personality on English football like few others. Remembered as one of Wolves' greatest ever players, he was inducted into the club's hall of fame in November 2010. Although a more multi-faceted figure than most footballers, he still struggled to find a niche after he stopped playing. Experiences such as his chairmanship of Wolves were bruising and dispiriting, and his forays into fund-raising and politics contributed to the image of a man whose ambition often outstripped his abilities. Though he took great pride in his writing, media appearances, charity work and PFA negotiations, he admitted at the end of his playing career that 'of all the kicks I have had out of life, kicking a ball is the greatest' (Ir. Times, 16 April 1975).