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. 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. 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. 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. He only played six games for Blackburn before returning to Scotland at the end of the season.
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. 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.
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