Falkirk’s team comprised Roxburgh, who was combining studies to be a PE teacher with his playing career; his classmate and team-mate Bobby Ford, a midfield player; Ferguson; and Chic Murray, a revered Scottish comedian who owed his place to the obligation to include a celebrity supporter. Murray was later to play Bill Shankly in the musical
You’ll Never Walk Alone
and a headmaster in the football-themed film
Gregory’s Girl
, the latter shortly before his death in 1985 at the age of sixty-five.
Ferguson, though, was the star performer of Falkirk’s
Quiz Ball
team. By virtue of beating Huddersfield Town through a Ferguson ‘goal’, they qualified for the semi-finals, in which they met Everton, whose celebrity fan was the disc jockey Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart, and whose manager, Harry Catterick, took part along with the former grammar-school boys Joe Royle and Brian Labone. Ferguson also ‘scored’ against them but Labone got two and so Everton were leading when the final question of the evening was put to Roxburgh.
‘Which jockey,’ asked David Coleman, ‘rode the winning horse in last year’s Grand National?’
Ferguson knew but, as he tried to whisper what would have been an equalising answer to Roxburgh, the younger man panicked and guessed: ‘Lester Piggott.’ Ferguson was irate – incredulous that anyone could imagine the best known flat-race jockey winning the most famous steeplechase. And not for the first time, nor for the last, he left Roxburgh in little doubt about it. The fans caught on and, trotting out for the next home match, Roxburgh was greeted with chants of ‘Lester Piggott’.
It was cruel luck, according to Bobby Ford, that he got the question. ‘Neither Andy nor I took any interest in racing,’ he said, ‘while a group in our dressing room, with Fergie very much one of them, followed the horses every day. They used to set aside money for it. Every week we’d get our wages in little brown envelopes with the amounts written on the outside – basic, bonuses, total – and they would get blank envelopes from the secretary, put a proportion of the money in, reseal them and write the new amounts on. Then they’d give them to their wives. You’d hear their girls at the annual dance “Oh, he’s so good, gives me his wage packet every week, unopened, bonuses and the lot . . .” If only they’d known.’
Ferguson apart, the Falkirk party did not let Roxburgh’s gaffe ruin the adventure and were further cheered by an invitation from Murray to join him at a nightclub he happened to own in Birmingham, where
Quiz Ball
was recorded. ‘Naturally we expected the VIP treatment,’ Ford recalled, ‘but he charged us to get in! Six pounds each – Chic was a true Scotsman! I was only on eight pounds a week as a part-timer. But Fergie and the others had a whipround to get me in.’
Ford had encountered Ferguson towards the end of his time at Rangers. They met in a reserve match when Ford, barely nineteen, was detailed to mark Ferguson at a corner. He went with Ferguson to the edge of the penalty area. ‘Before I could even move, the famous right elbow went into my solar plexus. That was me being introduced to Alex Ferguson. He had his free run into the box and I was left winded, but wiser.’
Ford neglected to remind Ferguson of that when he arrived at Falkirk. It soon became obvious that Ferguson’s aggression was not reserved for opponents. With his new team he went back to Ibrox for a Scottish Cup match and a minute from half-time, with the scores still level, the full-back John ‘Tiger’ McLaughlan made a mistake that led to Rangers taking the lead. In the dressing room, Ferguson went straight for him. ‘I can’t remember exactly what he called him,’ said Ford, ‘but “fucking useless bastard” would have come into it. Tiger wasn’t the quiet and retiring type either and all of a sudden the two of them were at each other. They were like a pair of animals, rolling about on the floor. The manager, Willie Cunningham, just watched it all, leaning with his elbow against the wall. Eventually two of us younger ones separated them and we went out for the second half [Rangers won 3-0]. But it was a shock to my system to see such violence.’
Not that Ford himself would shrink from the challenge when he fell foul of Ferguson. In, of all things, a testimonial match for the East Stirlingshire player Arthur Hamill. Towards the end of it, Ford misplaced a pass. ‘Fergie sprinted the length of the field to give me an earful while the game was going on. He was jabbing a finger in my face. I wasn’t taking in what he was saying and I wasn’t taking that finger either, so I gave him a bit back of what he’d given me.
‘At the end, quite a few of the crowd spilled on to the pitch to congratulate Arthur, who’d been a popular player for East Stirling. I’m walking off, through the throng of supporters, when suddenly Fergie comes for me and the arms are like windmill blades. Both of us. No blows actually land before we’re pulled apart, but there are plenty of wild swings to entertain the astonished supporters.’
Despite the demise of his Rangers career and the general perception that his best days as a player were behind him, Ferguson believed his arrival at Falkirk had boosted morale and results remained good in the First Division the following season.
He was always drawn back to Ibrox and when, on 2 January 1971, Falkirk’s match at Airdrie was postponed due to saturation of the pitch, Ferguson, Roxburgh and another team-mate, Tom Young, decided to watch the Old Firm match there. It proved a traumatic day.
Three minutes from the end, Jimmy Johnstone put Celtic ahead and Rangers fans began to stream, dejected, from the stadium. But Ferguson and his companions stayed just long enough to see Colin Stein, Ferguson’s replacement, cause wild rejoicing among the blue majority with an equaliser. The trio did not, however, wait for the final whistle; they made for the exits.
Ferguson arrived at his parents’ home to find them aghast. Television was reporting a death toll in the forties (it was to rise to sixty-six) from a crush on a stairway that had begun as the first wave of Rangers fans left early. The Fergusons feared most acutely for Alex’s brother, Martin, who had been in that section, and began an anguished search of bars where he might have gone. Eventually they found him driving home from one, oblivious to the disaster. Martin had left after Johnstone struck for Celtic but avoided the fatal congestion.
There was a widespread theory – to which Ferguson subscribed – that the crush had been indirectly caused by Stein’s goal in that Rangers fans near the bottom of the stairs had turned back upon hearing a great roar, or at least stopped to confirm their team’s salvation. The official inquiry found otherwise, its report stating that all spectators were moving in the same direction when the barriers collapsed. The casualties included many children and, as in the case of the Hillsborough disaster that cost the lives of ninety-six Liverpool supporters in 1989, former players joined in trying to help the bereaved families. Ferguson was among them.
His friendship with John Greig, his old team-mate from the Rangers days, survived a confrontation on the field. Although Ferguson was around thirty, the physical side of his game was never far from the surface. Nor, when Falkirk met Rangers, was there any question of divided loyalty. ‘We tangled on the centre circle,’ Greig recalled. ‘I was just recovering from an ankle injury and somebody had given me a whack. As I was rubbing the ankle, the ball came back to me, swiftly followed by Alex with, of course, the elbows up. He brushed past and, although he didn’t catch me, I had a swipe at him with my boot. I missed too – completely. But the referee stopped the game and called me across.
‘“Fair enough,” I said to him. “I deserve to be booked.” He said I deserved more than that – I was going off. I’d never been sent off in my career and so I had this conversation with him. Basically I told him that, if he sent me off, he’d be demoted from Grade One refereeing – the lot. That was in the days when Rangers had a good relationship with the Scottish FA.
‘Anyway, it didn’t work and I trooped off the park. In one way I was pleased because I was going to a very good friend’s daughter’s wedding in Edinburgh that evening and now I could get back in time for the meal. So I got in the bath and was lying there when suddenly I felt a hand on my head and was pushed under the water. I came up gulping for breath and there was Alex telling me he’d got sent off as well. “But you didn’t do anything,” I said. And he said, “I know that.” At the hearing, I think I got two weeks and a £100 fine and he got one week and £50. I spoke up for him – but he had a disciplinary record as long as your arm.’
Nor was that Ferguson’s only equivalent of the red card when at Falkirk. He had always been aggressive, but his temper was not abating with age or even parenthood; in February 1972, Cathy, already the mother of Mark, gave birth to twin boys, Darren and Jason. A month after the happy event, Ferguson was wanted by Hibs and keen to go, his exchanges with Willie Cunningham, a manager plainly reluctant to let him leave, becoming so passionate that they squared up, Ferguson once again shelving the behavioural principles intended to turn Life Boys into fine men.
So, whatever possessed Cunningham to couple a pay rise with a promise to help him stay in the game as a coach, it was not evidence of maturity on the player’s side.
Cunningham, being Cunningham, proved as good as his word. He began by sending Ferguson, when injured (Ferguson was no stranger to knee trouble), to assess and report on future opponents. The manager’s reward was to discover that Ferguson, as representative of the players’ union, saw his first duty as being to his fellow players, especially when Cunningham reacted to an especially supine defeat by ordering extra training and cutting expenses. The squad went on strike until, shortly before the next match, Cunningham, under pressure from club directors, relented.
Later Ferguson came to see his side of the argument, to understand the sense of isolation that caused him to punish the players so severely. But at that stage Ferguson was lucky that Cunningham – for all that he shared with Ferguson, most obviously a stubborn streak – had one significant difference from the younger man.
Such was his lack of vindictiveness that the following season he appointed Ferguson first-team coach, with responsibility for every aspect of match preparation except team selection – on which he would, however, be able to advise Cunningham.
According to Ferguson, performances improved, but he was just a month into his new role when, in the first half of a Cup match with Aberdeen, he swapped petulant kicks with Willie Young and was sent off. It was irresponsible enough behaviour for a player; for a player/coach it verged on a resignation letter. Nothing was said at half-time but late on the night of his sixth dismissal – a terrible figure to reach in an era when the walk of shame was comparatively rare – Cunningham took him aside and suggested he get wise if that future in football was to be rescued. Neither man knew that the incident had already cost Ferguson an interesting job offer: Jimmy Bonthrone, the Aberdeen manager, was having second and final thoughts about asking him to be his assistant.
The next day, Ferguson’s apology to his fellow players was accepted, but the Scottish FA, tiring of Ferguson’s rough edges, imposed a suspension of nearly two months.
Falkirk, for the second season in succession, avoided relegation, but Cunningham was dismissed. The new manager, John Prentice, let the firebrand Ferguson go and the next move was to the West Coast. To Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses (as Robert Burns wrote) for honest men and bonnie lasses. The national poet would have been proud of the local football club, too, in 1973/4 because, under the effervescent management of Ally MacLeod, later to supervise Scotland’s calamitous appearance in the World Cup in Argentina, an Ayr United team of part-timers finished sixth in the First Division, the club’s best performance ever.
Ferguson, partnering another former Rangers striker, the cheerful playboy George McLean, began with seven goals in eight matches, but his form and fitness deteriorated and by early spring he was usually a substitute. His last competitive match was for Ayr’s reserves against their East Fife equivalents and, although there was potential for one last sending-off in that his craggy young opponent, Colin Methven, handled him with scant care, the devil in Ferguson had gone with his legs.
The devil in the player, that is; there was a hell of a manager to be made. ‘By now I knew I was going to have to work hard at it,’ he was to recall. ‘When you’re with Rangers and scoring in front of big crowds, you think it will never end. Then you’re released and try for the Falkirk job and don’t get it and you start thinking. I was at Ayr when the offer came along to manage East Stirling. I asked Ally about it. “You can’t wait for the perfect job,” he said.’
First the loose ends of his playing career had to be tied. The second half of his two-year contract was mutually waived in the early summer of 1974 and MacLeod did it with kindness, happily writing off the entirety of Ferguson’s signing-on fee and erring on the side of generosity with his severance pay.
The University of Life
B
y now the Fergusons had completed their family. Mark, their first-born, was nearly six and the twins in nappies. Social life tended to revolve around the Beechwood pub and restaurant near Hampden Park, where the Fergusons got on especially well with Jock Stein and his wife. Ferguson was given a basic training in the catering business; helped by friendly staff, he learned to cook and met a publican called Sam Falconer who, at his own establishment, passed on the techniques of keeping beer in good condition and customers calm.
The latter was not always easy, as Ferguson discovered when he followed his instinct into the licensed trade.