'If we lose, cancel the booking': inside Duncan Ferguson's high stakes comeback

Ex-Rangers and Everton legend could not resist lure of dugout return

Surely more than a few people’s first reaction, upon hearing Duncan Ferguson had been appointed manager of Glentoran, was apprehension. Big Dunc hits Belfast, what can possibly go wrong?

Regardless of the wellspring of goodwill he can count on these days, this career development sounded like a recipe for trouble. The 54-year-old’s latest slightly left-field turn has taken him across the Irish Sea.

As a well-known former Rangers striker, this move might have prompted alarm back in the day. But this is the modern-day version of Ferguson: affable, professional, media friendly and on a mission to rehabilitate his managerial career.

He wants to “smell the grass again”, so it’s just as well that Glentoran aren’t one of the six clubs in the Northern Irish Premiership who play on an artificial pitch.

Fresh from being inducted into his Stirling hometown’s hall of fame, Ferguson has the chance to achieve legendary status in East Belfast if he can lead Glens—who are currently sitting third, eleven points behind leaders Coleraine—to a first league title since 2009.

He has already dazzled at a press conference, spreading his infectious brand of bonhomie – last enjoyed during his entertaining stint as a World Cup pundit for ITV - around a small room packed with journalists. They were still scarcely believing their luck that Ferguson, like one of his racing pigeons with a faulty radar, had flown off course and landed on their patch.

All these reporters’ Christmases have come at once. Indeed, they are already relishing a tasty Boxing Day encounter with rivals Linfield.

“Gi’ me a chance lads, eh?” Ferguson gently admonished on Monday, when he was unveiled, after one reporter asked whether he’d given much thought to the clash with their greatest rivals. First things first: Ballymena United at The Oval on Saturday afternoon, when he says he'll be wearing the natty green Glentoran hoodie he seems to have barely taken off since starting the job earlier this week.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?!” he beams, after I compliment him on it. “I think it’s been doing quite well. The ten they had in the club shop have sold out!”

Back in the show after TV spell

This Saturday feels like the first day of the rest of Ferguson’s life. He has returned to a game he feared might have forsaken him forever after two bruising experiences at doomed Forest Green Rovers and financially stricken Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

The latter tenure, during which the club entered administration, came to an end almost exactly two years ago. It was beginning to feel like he might never return, especially given the success of his stint in a Brooklyn studio during the World Cup.

His unvarnished charisma shone through next to the likes of Roy Keane and Ian Wright and had GQ magazine gushing: “Thank you whoever at ITV is responsible for this. Thank you for the gift of Duncan Ferguson.”

He sought the advice of Sam Allardyce, whom he worked with at Everton, when the Glentoran opportunity came up.

“I spoke to Sam and he’s always said to me, ‘a win's a win’. It doesn't matter what level you're at. At the end of the day, if you win on a Saturday, you go home happy.

“If you get beat, you're sad. You're not happy that you're getting beat. So a win's a win.

“I'm back in the show,” he adds. “Looking forward to tomorrow. I'm back living the dream, aren't I? This is what I wanted to do.

“I could easily have not come back in. Easily. Financially, everything on that side of it, is positive. I've been doing really well off the field….”

He pauses for a bit before exclaiming that he’s risking ruining everything by allowing himself to be lured back in. “My missus is going nuts at me because I have sacrificed a lot to come over here,” he says. “But it’s fitba’. It’s the dream. I’m back. We’ve all got dreams, haven’t we? I’m still young enough, I am still enthusiastic.”

Janine, his wife, celebrated her birthday on Friday. He has promised to take her out for a meal in Belfast following Saturday’s game though on one condition – Glentoran secure three points. “I’ve told the restaurant, if we don’t win, you’ll have to cancel that booking,” he says.

He and Janine have been married for over 28 years – their wedding, with Ferguson wearing a kilt at Liverpool Cathedral, was the same month as Scotland kicked off the 1998 World Cup against Brazil.

His recent punditry stint during this summer’s tournament was a small, if enjoyable, consolation for missing out on France ’98 as a player because, well, we all know the story backwards by now.

Stung by what he perceived as persecution by the authorities, football included, for his 44-day spell in prison after headbutting Jock McStay while playing for Rangers against Raith Rovers, Ferguson eventually resolved to walk away from the international scene after just seven caps.

He swithered over accepting ITV’s offer. “My agent said to me: 'You're joking, aren't you?' Everybody in the country wants this gig. I was a wee bit worried about going into the punditry and maybe taking away from the fact that I wanted to be a manager. But actually, it helps you, doesn't it? It helps your profile.

“You go to the World Cup, it was a dream. To be fair, I should have went to the World Cup in 1998, shouldn't I? I should have went there. But because I was young and stupid and pig-headed, I bloody never. I should have been the one taking that centre against Brazil.

“It's crazy. But you can't go back, Alan, can you? I can't go back, unfortunately. I beat myself up every night I put my head on the pillow. The second-best thing is to go and be a pundit.

“I loved it,” he adds. “It got me back talking about football, meeting football people, Zidane and Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane and all these people, you know what I mean? So it gives you a passion again. I could easily have gone down that route.

“I had loads of offers to continue that. But it’s like a boxer, isn’t it? You’ve always got one mare fight, one mare round….”

Messages from pundits pals - and millions of hits

Roy Keane has sent him a voice message congratulating him on the new post. “The club are made up,” he says, with reference to the interest sparked. “They’re getting millions of hits now. I’ve got Roy Keane voice-mailing me, made up. Roy, Gary Neville, there’s loads of them wishing me all the best.”

As he’s already confirmed, he will base himself in Belfast, although he will continue travelling to Manchester once a week to record the Overlap Daily podcast, part of Neville’s media empire.

He’s already feeling at home in a city where everyone knows his name. With a history rooted in maritime trade, avowedly working class and football obsessed, Belfast resembles the places where Ferguson was stationed during his playing career – Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle and, where it all began, Dundee.

“The people have been very kind to me indeed,” he says. “The people at the club have been very nice. I've met one or two people away from the club.

“Generally, the people have all been good to me. There's not been a single bad response, really. Taxi drivers have been good, kids in the street, everybody's happy at the moment.

"As I say to the people here, this is the flowers and chocolate period! Until you lose a game, you know what I mean?! This is the honeymoon period, isn't it?”

He plans to catch up with Michael O’Neill before long. The pair bonded at Dundee United, a relationship forged on a mutual antipathy towards Jim McLean and sealed over pints in the city’s Tally Ho bar on karaoke nights. Now one is manager of Northern Ireland and the other is in charge of one of the country’s biggest clubs. It would have been hard to imagine then. “I know, I know,” says Ferguson. “We used to sit in his flat on a Tuesday night before we'd go out, warming up for Tally Ho's! I’ve heard him speak at Licence coaching course events. Hopefully I will bump into him a bit later.”

The past is catching up with him, in a good way. The recent Stirling recognition, when he was honoured alongside the likes of the late Jimmy Bone and Billy Bremner, felt cathartic. “I had probably my hardest time when I was younger in Stirling city centre,” he says. “I was never in trouble when I was a kid.

“I never had the police at the door until I started playing football. In Stirling people target you because they know who you are. I think that’s the same for everyone. All the local lads get the hardest time. And then when you go down south, they become your biggest supporter. ‘He’s one of us! I know Duncan, I know Duncan…!’

"But when you are in your own city centre for some reason they want to have a pop at you. I walk round my old neighbourhood now, the old schemes where I was brought up, and it is fantastic. And some of the old families are still there, coming to the door. They all love you now! But when you’re younger, it’s a bit tougher.”

Changed days since Jim McLean rebuke

Ferguson will feel the love again on Saturday afternoon. Nearly 3,000 are expected to welcome him to Glentoran, with Big Dunc’s arrival adding a few hundred to the gate. No wonder his recruitment was described by one seasoned observer as among “the most extraordinary developments in the history of the Irish League”.

His determination to return to the game at whatever level, in whatever city, flies in the face of that memorable rebuke delivered by angry Dundee United manager Jim McLean to Ferguson when he was testing his legendary first manager’s patience on an almost daily basis.

McLean raged at the striker, conceding the game "means far too much to me, I know that", but then that was far better than what it meant to Ferguson, which was the square root of f-all.

Surely Ferguson has clocked the name of his new place of work. Or at least it’s current official name: The BetMcLean Oval.

Delicious. While McLean wouldn't have bet on Ferguson pitching up here or indeed anywhere as a manager, he'd recognise the charms of a proper football club and an old school stadium that ranks high on the list of favoured destinations for the football groundhoppers’ brigade. A World War Two pillbox still stands at one end of the stadium having survived the Luftwaffe raids of 1941.

Ferguson is a new attraction, standing tall and proud like the cranes at the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyard, with which Glentoran have shared a symbiotic relationship for over 140 years.

Now on 76 games as a permanent, frontline manager, Ferguson is inching his way towards McLean’s total of over 1100. It’s extraordinary to think McLean retired at age 56, which is just two years older than Ferguson is now.

Including his five matches in caretaker charge at Everton, Ferguson has overseen 81 matches. He wants to start addressing the low total of victories: just 19. In fact, this meagre number, owing as much as anything to his habit of taking over struggling teams, is eating him up.

“Jim McLean had a lot of things he was right about,” he says. “He was an experienced guy and he was a great coach.

“But there were some things he was wrong on,” he adds. “I could easily have just turned down this opportunity. I could have sat in the back garden with my pigeons, couldn't I?

“Now I'm in Belfast and starting afresh. It's exciting. It's fantastic. I've got a dream. I've got a passion.

“I love my coaching all the way through from Everton. It's not as if I've just come into football and straight into management. I've done everything. I've worked in England. I've worked in Scotland. I'm working in Northern Ireland. I’ve only got Wales to go now!”