Free Football – Bloody Hell! by Patrick Barclay

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