{"id":522944,"date":"2026-01-17T14:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/522944\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T14:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:22:15","slug":"the-teenage-goalie-who-became-queen-of-the-south-chief-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/522944\/","title":{"rendered":"The teenage goalie who became Queen of the South chief executive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter<\/p>\n

\"QueenQueen of the South<\/p>\n

Dan Armstrong signed for Queen of the South as a teenager<\/p>\n

Dan Armstrong joined Queen of the South as a 16-year-old goalkeeper with dreams of a playing career.<\/p>\n

Twelve years later, he is the chief executive of the Scottish League 1 side – one of the youngest people in such a role in the UK.<\/p>\n

It is not where the 28-year-old – originally from Accrington – imagined he would end up when he first moved north. <\/p>\n

However, his philosophy of “no problems, only solutions” has seen him put his hopes of playing to one side and take over the running of the Dumfries outfit.<\/p>\n

\"SkillsSkills Development Scotland<\/p>\n

Dan became chief executive when the board announced its intention to stand down two years ago<\/p>\n

“I played with Burnley as a youngster in their academy, but I wasn’t good enough,” he explained.<\/p>\n

It was after that that he was offered a trial north of the border with Queen of the South.<\/p>\n

“At that point nobody else was looking at me as a 5ft 9in goalie,” he said.<\/p>\n

“All I wanted to do was to be a footballer, so when the opportunity came, I came up to Palmerston and I loved it.”<\/p>\n

However, it did not pan out as he had hoped.<\/p>\n

“I played here for three years but, again, familiar story – I was really rubbish and that brought to an end the football career,” he said.<\/p>\n

That could have been the end of the road in the sport, as it is for so many aspiring footballers, but the south of Scotland club had other ideas.<\/p>\n

During his playing days, Dan was “injured quite a lot” and while he had a broken arm he had got involved in an SPFL Trust schools’ water project – teaching the importance of hydration.<\/p>\n

He said the club had so many initiatives on the go that he was able to quickly switch from playing to off-the-pitch activities.<\/p>\n

“One day I’d been pulled in by the manager at the time and he said: ‘Obviously we’re not renewing your contract’,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I said: ‘I sort of gathered that, and that’s probably a good decision for everybody involved, because I’m not going to be a consistent first-team player at all’.”<\/p>\n

\"QueenQueen of the South<\/p>\n

The teenage goalkeeper’s dreams of playing football as a career ended when he was released by Queen of the South<\/p>\n

The club, however, was keen to keep him in some capacity and chairman Billy Hewitson offered him a role as a community coach.<\/p>\n

“I was just sort of guessing and playing at everything and asking so many questions of so many people – and it would have been the most ridiculous questions,” Dan admitted.<\/p>\n

“But you got an answer and started shaping an idea and seeing what other clubs were doing and did a lot of research in my own time.<\/p>\n

“That’s when we formed the Queen and South Community Trust, which has then gone on to do great things.”<\/p>\n

\"QueenQueen of the South<\/p>\n

After his playing days ended, Dan decided he wanted to remain in football with the Dumfries club<\/p>\n

It has seen the Doonhamers reach out to locals in a wide range of ways including coaching, school visits, mental health initiatives and even running a food bank.<\/p>\n

“We just want people to engage in sport in a positive manner,” said Dan.<\/p>\n

His vision and energy helped him become commercial manager – with the club putting him through his Masters in business.<\/p>\n

Then, when the board announced plans to stand down a couple of years ago,<\/a> he became chief executive.<\/p>\n

\"SNSSNS<\/p>\n

The Dumfries side currently sits in the play-off places in Scottish League 1<\/p>\n

So what does his average day involve?<\/p>\n

He said: “It could be we’ve got meetings with the community team, what’s our vision for that, what do we want to achieve, how do we achieve that?<\/p>\n

“And then from that it could be on a call with the Macron kit supplier about maybe what’s the kits looking like next year.<\/p>\n

“So from one minute we’re going on about feeding children in our local area to the next minute being on the phone to Italy and Macron going – now what’s the kits going to look like?<\/p>\n

“It’s a lot of different decisions and different conversations.”<\/p>\n

\"QueenQueen of the South<\/p>\n

Dan loved his time as a player with the Palmerston Park side<\/p>\n

He is well aware of the pressure from fans who want a winning team as well as all the community activities and said he hoped to get the Doonhamers “as high as possible”.<\/p>\n

They currently sit in the play-off places of Scottish football’s third tier.<\/p>\n

“If you could see Queen of the South in the Premier League, it would be a dream, an absolute dream,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And I don’t see why you can’t aim for that and strive for that.”<\/p>\n

He knows that results are “massively important” but said part of his job was trying “build a business around results not mattering”.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never been at a game and never played in a game where I’ve gone – I wouldn’t mind the other team winning today – because everybody wants to win,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There are 42 teams in the SPFL that want to win every single week and they come up against another team that wants to win every single weekend – so you can’t win every game.”<\/p>\n

The aim, he said, was to improve “year on year” and try to get all parts of the club performing the best they could.<\/p>\n

He might not be out there playing any more, but Dan Armstrong is working all the time to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter Queen of the South Dan Armstrong signed for Queen of the South as a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":522945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-522944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115910892070329899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}