But at some point when he was about five, things turned for the worse. By 1881 his mother was staying with her younger sister in Pitlochry and by 1888 she seems to have passed away, in an Edinburgh Asylum. Indeed, at the time of Ned's marriage in Arbroath to local girl, Davina Bertie, she is recorded as dead. Thus he and his eight siblings had been brought up by his father, who would die, living with one of his other sons, in 1919 again in Arbroath.

Indeed, the gradual movement from about 1881 of the Doigs, Ned aged fourteen, from inland Angus probably explains why he at eighteen did not join Forfar but the coastal-town club, there spending five seasons, initially as a winger, establishing, first as only a stand-in goalkeeper of only 5 ft 9 ins in height, and actually originally a baker and finally an insurance broker to trade, a reputation for his ability to clear by punching. In fact he would win the first two of his Scotland caps, whilst still with The Red Lichties, before in 1890, after in 1889 a dalliance with Blackburn, it was finally South to Sunderland, still as an insurance-man, and fourteen seasons with three League titles. 

And it was probably only the move to Wearside, so no longer resident in Scotland, that stopped him adding to his caps until in 1906 reality was recognised by the SFA,the rules were adjusted and he he was immediately recalled. It put the Scotland team back on a proper footing and, even in an era when there was a gamut of good Scottish 'keepers, meant that over the next seven seasons, until 1904 at Roker Park and then at Liverpool, he would be selected on two more occasions, both against England.