Everyone at AFC was saddened to learn of the passing of former player Doug Coutts. The defender played for the club in the first half of the 1960s.
Doug recently passed away aged 83, on Friday 25th April 2025, after a short stay at Ormskirk & Southport hospital in Lancashire.
Born and bred in Aberdeen (12 January 1942) and then signed for the Dons on 02 February 1960, according to his family Doug was immensely proud to have played for his home city over the period 1959 to 1965 and he often reminisced about his time as a player here and in his school days playing alongside the great Denis Law and receiving a Scotland schoolboy cap. In total he made 121 appearances for Aberdeen as a part-time player and scored four goals.
Our thoughts are very much with his wife Jean, daughters Valerie and Diane and the rest of the family and his friends at this sad time.
Career
Doug Coutts always seemed destined to make an impact in the game having captained both the Aberdeen primary and secondary school select teams. While at Kittybrewster Primary School, he had appeared alongside Denis Law and at the Grammar School, he had been capped at schoolboy level.
Less than five years after winning the League Championship for the first time, Aberdeen were struggling. 1959-60 season was Aberdeen’s worst since the War. Manager Davie Shaw, who had also helped the club win the League Cup in 1955-56 stepped down and was replaced by former player Tommy Pearson.
And it was the new manager Pearson who signed Doug Coutts from Banks o’ Dee despite interest from both East Fife and Forfar Athletic. With steady employment as a civil servant in the local income tax office, Doug initially asked for a few days to think the opportunity over. He finally agreed to sign but only as a part-time player.
His first appearance for the reserves was against a Rangers ‘A’ team whose forward line contained Sammy Baird, Max Murray and Ralph Brand and he came through with flying colours. Doug’s first team debut came shortly after, with Jim Clunie unavailable (playing for the RAF) and Willie Clydesdale out with a cold, so after only one reserve team appearance, he was given his first team debut against Clyde on Tuesday 08 March 1960.
On a bitterly cold evening Doug got off to a good start when he made a timely and successful tackle on John Coyle, the Clyde centre-forward, who appeared well placed to find the net.
Clyde would go on and win the game 2-0 – and repeat the score inflicted on Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup the previous month. Even the two goalscorers were the same.
The only bright feature for Aberdeen was the excellent debut of Doug. Taking no risks throughout and appearing completely free from big occasion nerves, he had “every reason to look back on his Scottish League debut with pleasure.”
The teams that night were:
Aberdeen: Ogston, Kinnell, Hogg, Baird, Coutts, Burns, Little, Cummings, Davidson, Wishart, Mulhall.
Clyde: McCulloch, Walters, Haddock, White, Finlay, Clinton, Wilson, Herd, Coyle, Robertson, Boyd
Doug was returned to the reserves for the following week but with the transfer of Jim Clunie to St Mirren at the start of the following season, Doug found himself as the first choice centre half. Not surprisingly the young defender struggled for consistency in struggling side. And found it hard to replicate the good form that he had shown the previous season and was replaced at centre half by George Kinnell.
1960/61 was the year Aberdeen rung the changes.
Manager Pearson got rid of the old guard – Clunie, Glen and Hather – and introduced a number of teenage replacements, most notably Charlie Cooke. But the early 60s were a really difficult period for the club.
From 1955 to 1965 the Scottish League was won by Aberdeen, Rangers twice, Hearts, Rangers, Hearts, Dundee, Rangers twice, Kilmarnock before Celtic started to dominate with their European Cup winning side in the late 60s. But for the Dons, the highs of the 1950s were by now a distant memory.
Coutts was back in the team in December 1960 and more or less remained there until a poor run of results in March 1961 saw him out of the side.
For the 1961/62 season, he was the stand in centre-half for first choice George Kinnell, making a handful of appearances. However, the following two seasons saw Coutts as the regular centre-half, making 35 then 34 appearances and missing only a few games through injury.
In season 1962/63, it was a campaign of marked improvement and that was almost entirely down to the performance of Coutts and a defence which conceded fewer goals than at any time since the championship winning side in 1954-55. The toughness of local boys Coutts and Ally Shewan helped the Dons massively during this era.
A strong start to the season saw Coutts part of a side that won four games and drew one in September, this included a 2-1 win at Celtic Park. The following month they hammered Raith Rovers 10-0 at Pittodrie, a post war record, but later is the season exited the Scottish Cup to the same Raith side at the Quarter-Final stage. When they defeated Champions Dundee for a second time that season on New Years Day the Dons moved up to third in the league table but would eventually finish sixth. A season of what might have been.
The 1963/64 season saw George Kinnell move to Stoke City, and as part of the deal the two sides met in a friendly at Pittodrie, Aberdeen winning 2-0.
Aberdeen: Ogston, Shewan, Hogg, Burns, Coutts, Smith, Kerrigan, Cooke, Graham, Winchester, Hume.
Stoke City: Lawrie Leslie, Eddie Stuart, Tony Allen, Calvin Palmer, George Kinnell, Eric Skeels, Gerry Bridgwood, Dennis Viollet, John Ritchie, Peter Dobing, Keith Bebbington. Unused Subs: Jimmy O’Neill (gk), Ron Andrew
The Dons narrowly beat Queen’s Park managed by Eddie Turnbull in the Scottish Cup but in the next round they lost to Ayr United and Pearson’s job as manager was always on borrowed time. Attendances continued to drop as the team’s away form was actually better than their home form.
At the start of the 1964/65 season, as the team continued to struggle after a poor start to the season, manager Tommy Pearson moved Coutts onto the right wing, Doug having only played there in the Summer Cup in May 1964 – a new competition disrupted an outbreak of typhoid in Aberdeen, which led to world wide media interest in the Granite City. Coutts was in the Aberdeen side which defeated Raith Rovers in the semi-final.
There is little doubt it was the lack of attacking opinions which caused much of the struggles in the first half of the decade for the Dons.
Before playing him as a winger, Manager Pearson pointed out that Doug, “has the height, is fast and he has a good shot”. He added that this was something he had thought about for sometime. Despite a fine performance in the game against St Johnstone (12th September 1964) and scoring in the 2-1 victory, manager Tommy Pearson the following week had Doug back in his more customary position of centre-half.
When John MacCormack was signed in October 1964, that effectively ended Doug’s career at the club.
The Dons that season would again exit the Scottish Cup to lower league opposition, this time East Fife. Pearson resigned after the defeat to be replaced by Eddie Turnbull.
Doug then asked for a transfer as he was moving to the tax office in East Kilbride before the start of the 1965/66 season. As a part-time player he was understandably not going to be in new manager Eddie Turnbull’s plans and was one of the 17 players released at the end of the 1964-65 season.
Signed by Berwick Rangers, he was immortalised as a member of their team which beat Glasgow Rangers 1-0 in the Scottish Cup in January 1967, a game in which he gave a terrific performance and confirmed what many Berwick supporters believed – Doug was playing in a league below his level.
The end of the decade would see Doug Coutts return to Pittodrie, as Aberdeen met Berwick in the Scottish Cup in January 1969 and Doug would captain his side. The match programme from that game noted:
“One of the most commanding and stylish players in the Second Division, Coutts has been a Berwick stalwart for three years since coming from Pittodrie. He has recently been operating at left half, with much more freedom to roam upfield.”
The Aberdeen would eventually win the game 3-0, although the victory was not nearly as comfortable as it sounds and it took two goals from Jim Forrest, who was in the Rangers team two seasons earlier, to eventually see the Dons through.
The teams that day were:
Aberdeen: McGarr, Whyte, Shewan, Petersen, Boel, Buchan, Forrest (Taylor 83), Smith, Johnston, Robb, Craig.
Berwick: Wallace, Petterson, Haig, Smith, Coutts, Gilchrist, Tait, Craig, Bowron, Jones, Dowds.
From there Doug moved to Wigan Athletic, helping them win the Northern Premier League championship in 1970/71. He was also a member of the side which gave Manchester City a huge test in the FA Cup at Maine Road, losing only 1-0. Doug ended his football career with Altrincham in 1973.
