Inverness man with heart transplant supports NHS Highland Organ Donation campaign

There’s not an obvious connection between heart disease and managing a national football team, but for 58-year-old Invernessian Duncan MacAulay, the path was a natural one, and it’s all thanks to his organ donor.

Back in 2019, Duncan, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, operational comms manager, collapsed while running in Strathclyde Country Park. On his return home to Inverness he saw his GP who immediately admitted him to Raigmore, where he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.

After trials with medication, a defibrillator was fitted into Duncan’s left shoulder. It didn’t prevent his heart from regularly stopping but would shock him back into life when it did. As the ‘stops and shocks’ became ever more frequent and alarming (not for Duncan, but for those around him) there was no option but to find him a donor heart.

“I was at home in Inshes in February 2023 when I got the call from The Golden Jubilee Hospital in Glasgow saying they had a new heart for me”, he explains. Remarkably, within 10 days of his operation, he was back at home in Inverness.

With twin goals of honouring the anonymous donor who had lost their life, and of making the most of the new opportunities his new heart has given him, Duncan set out to get back to fitness as quickly as possible.

“I started with long walks, but wanted to do more for my heart, so I joined the gym, and I now go there every morning before work,” he says, recalling this as part of the current NHS Highland Organ Donation campaign, of which we are a media partner.

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“My new heart has made a phenomenal difference to my life,” he says. “My wife and family don’t need to worry anymore about me collapsing and having to be shocked back into life. I feel like the luckiest man on earth.

“I was lucky to be the right blood group, weight, and height, when this particular heart became available. And most of all, lucky that my donor family said yes to transplant.

“I felt that I really needed to do something positive with this new lease of life to honour my donor and their family, and to raise awareness of the organ donation programme so that others might get the same gift that I received. But what?”

Duncan’s love of sport meant his interest was piqued when he heard about the inaugural World Transplant Football Cup, which took place in Cervia in Italy in September 2024.

“I looked into it, hoping to be able to support my home nation, but I was shocked to discover that Scotland was the only home nation not represented - I needed to fix that!”

Duncan contacted Transplant Sport, a charity seeking to keep transplant recipients fit and active and raising awareness of the impact of organ donation. It does everything Duncan felt drawn to doing after his own transplant.

Within a short time, Duncan had created the first-ever Scottish National Transplant Football Team. And with very little time to train together, they competed in the Euros in Oxford in April, securing an 8-1 win over Ireland, a 4-4 draw with Spain who were the runners up at the 2024 World Cup, and narrowly losing 4-3 to eventual finalists Italy.

The aim is now to strengthen and expand the mixed gender team, and build a support network so that Scotland can compete in the next Transplant Football World Cup in 2026.

To do that, Duncan, as team manager, needs to raise funds for training facilities, kit, and education programmes, and he hopes to develop a number of regional Transplant Football teams in all areas of Scotland, and, in the future, expand into other sports. The search is on to bring in an army of volunteers to give financial, legal, fundraising, and nutritional guidance, and physio support too, to guard against injuries.

The energy Duncan has to give back in honour of the donor who gave so much to him, is outstanding, and a demonstration of the impact organ donation has had on his life.

So, alongside his sterling efforts with the football team, he urges everyone to get themselves informed about organ donation and decide whether they’d like to become a donor themselves.

And he urges us all to then share that decision with our families.

“Don’t give your family a really difficult decision to make,” he stresses. “Make that decision and share it with them, so if the worst happens to you, they know what to do.”

Organ Donation in Scotland brings hope out of tragedy. Find out more about organ donation here and register your wishes online. Then talk to your family about your wishes. Although Scotland legally has an opt-out system, your family’s wishes will always take precedence if you die in circumstances that mean you could become a donor, so your wish to donate could be overridden.

Myth to Bust:

My health or lifestyle choices are a barrier to becoming a donor. Don’t rule yourself out!

Even if you have smoked, used recreational drugs, or have had a cancer diagnosis in the past, your organs can still give life to others. There are very few conditions where organ donation is ruled out completely. A clinical team will carry out tests and look at your medical history, making an assessment on a case by case and organ by organ basis.

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