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Clan MacDougall are well known for their determination, grit, and talent, and many of their members have distinguished themselves in a wide range of fields. Read on to find out more!
Meet the Famous MacDougalls
Ted MacDougall
One particularly skilled MacDougall made a splash on the football field.
Ted MacDougall was born on the 8th of January 1947 in Inverness, before moving to Lancashire at the age of 12, where he began to hone his natural sporting talents, building a reputation in the local men’s amateur league.
He was recruited by Liverpool FC as an apprentice while still only a teenager and was offered a professional contract on his 19th birthday by the legendary Bill Shankly. While this was undeniably a huge start to his career, he never made a first-team appearance with Liverpool.
His true break-through came when he moved to York City in 1967 for an impressive £5,000. He quickly established himself as an amazing striker, scoring during his debut match against Workington, and finishing his first season with an admirable total of 15 goals.
In the following season, he improved on this already impressive achievement, scoring 19 times.
This had caught the attention of Bournemouth, who recruited MacDougall in 1969. He quickly became a legend in the club, earning the nickname ‘SuperMac.’ His most iconic game took place in November of 1971, when he scored a triple hattrick against Margate in the first round of the FA Cup. To this day, this is still the largest-ever number of goals scored by any player in an FA Cup match!
Bigger teams were starting to take notice, and in 1972, Manchester United signed MacDougall for £200,000. His time at the club ended up being brief, and he moved on to West Ham, before joining Norwich City, where he returned to peak performance, scoring 23 goals, including 2 hattricks, in the 1975-76 season.
In the Autumn of 1976, MacDougall moved again, this time to Southampton, where he scored 23 league goals in his first season with the team. The following year also gave MacDougall his first experience of European football, as Southampton reached the quarter finals of the UEFA Winners’ Cup.
In 1978, 6 years after first leaving the club, MacDougall decided to spend his last stint of professional football with Bournemouth, rejoining with a transfer from Southampton.
After retiring, he did not rest on his laurels – instead, he enthusiastically pursued a range of other business ventures. He started a sports shop with branches in Boscombe and Pool called ‘Ted MacDougall Sports,’ served as the landlord of the Mill Arms pub in Hampshire, and wrote the well-reviewed autobiography: ‘Macdou-Goal: The Ted MacDougall story.’ Later in his life, he moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he became a successful property developer.
MacDougall’s influence on football is highly respected to this day, and in July of 2013, Bournemouth FC honoured his service when they named the redeveloped southern stand at Dean Court stadium after him.
Robert Dougall
Our next famous face for today was once a British broadcasting staple.
Robert Dougall was born on the 27th of November 1913 in Surrey to a Scottish father. His family often struggled with financial difficulties, and the young Robert had to leave school at 16 to start earning money. He managed to snag a job at an accountancy firm, where he gained a good reputation, before moving to the BBC’s accounts department.
It was in the BBC’s drama society, however, where he found his true passion, enjoying the opportunity to perform and develop his public speaking skills that were soon to come in very handy. On his 21st birthday, he gained a role as an announcer in the ‘British Empire Department,’ the forerunner of the BBC World Service, becoming the youngest staff announcer.
By 1939, he had been promoted to the position of associate editor and took on the enormous task of announcing the declaration of war on Germany, after having made one last appeal to Germany in their own language, imploring them to ‘withdraw their forces and avert the impending war.’
Throughout the war, he reported on the London Blitz, and kept the public informed on how the fighting was going, before joining the Navy himself in 1942.
In 1946, Dougall returned to the BBC as an announcer and newsreader for the BBC Home Service, and in 1947, he was appointed as programme manager of the BBC’s Far Eastern Service by the Foreign Office.
By the late 1950s, Dougall was a regular at reading tv news, making him one of the few people from the BBC’s early radio service who managed to transition successfully to television. He announced numerous huge world events, including Khrushchev’s fall and Harold Wilson’s 1964 election win, and in 1970, he became the first person to present BBC’s ‘Nine O’Clock News.’
After retiring, Dougall threw himself into his other interests, becoming the President of the RSPB, helping the organisation increase their membership from 50,000 to 250,000!
He remains an iconic figure of British broadcasting, and his voice has accompanied some of the 20th century's biggest events.
Christopher McDougall
Our final famous MacDougall is a bestselling adventure-sportswriter!
Christopher McDougall, born in 1962, started his career as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, writing on wars in Rwanda, Angola, and Congo.
His later book writing endeavours, however, were inspired by an individual mission.
Despite being a highly active person, McDougall found himself unable to run long distances due to a persistent foot injury. He decided to search for a solution and found himself living in Mexico’s Copper Canyons alongside the Tarahumara Indians, popularly believed to be some of the world’s best distance runners, able to run hundreds of miles barefoot.
Although he had been told by doctors that he would never be able to run such a distance, McDougall overcame his injury and joined the tribe for a 50-mile race through the canyons.
He wrote a book, ‘Born to Run,’ about his experience, which sparked the barefoot running movement, spending 4 years on the New York Times bestseller list, and earning a spot on Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.
His second book, ‘Natural Born Heroes,’ was also an instant bestseller, promising to teach readers about the ‘lost secrets of strength and endurance,’ very fitting for a descendent of Clan MacDougall! It tells the fascinating story of how an unlikely group of ‘heroes’ helped to resist the Nazi invasion of Crete by tapping into their instincts.
His most recent work, ‘Running with Sherman,’ describes how McDougall took on the task of nursing a neglected donkey back to health. Alongside caring for Sherman’s physical health, McDougall reasoned that the best way to soothe a donkey psychologically is to give it a job to do. Therefore, he set about training Sherman for the World Championship Pack Burro Race, a race where people and donkeys run together through the picturesque Colorado Rockies.
McDougall obviously inherited the clan’s grit and determination, and we think it’s great that he is sharing this with others and using it to make the world a better place!
That brings us to the end of the Famous Faces of Clan MacDougall. We’re sure you’re feeling as impressed by this mighty bunch as we are! If you’d like to learn more about Clan MacDougall, please head over to our Clan MacDougall page, and make sure to keep an eye out for the rest of our MacDougall content this month.
Image Sources:
Dean Court By Matthew Jackson - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Robert Dougall By http://waytofamous.com/[email protected], Fair use
Rio Urique, Copper Canyon By Fl1pper, CC BY-SA 3.0
