steken1
Player Valuation: £70m
Interesting article here from the Guardian. For me he's my absolute hero. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up just singing his name in my head, when we sing it at Goodison I'm like Michael Jackson in Toys'R'us.
I can't ever imagine feeling that way about a player again. Maybe it's just an age thing?
By the time Duncan Ferguson had joined Everton on loan in the autumn of 1994 the club’s crowds had dipped; they attracted just over 27,000 when Ferguson made his home debut, against Coventry City. In Scotland, Rangers were playing in front of home crowds of over 40,000, and there was the added attraction of almost guaranteed Champions League participation, even if the Ibrox side had fallen at the first hurdle in both of Ferguson’s seasons there.
Everton, sitting in last place in the Premier League, were not quite so appealing. Paul Rideout, who had made the same journey from Ibrox to Goodison, articulated the contrast when he greeted [Ian] Durrant on the player’s first morning at training at Bellefield, the club’s training ground: “Jesus Christ, Durranty, what the [Poor language removed] are you doing here? Do you not realise the state we’re in?”
It would get worse for Everton before it got better. Three consecutive league defeats against the hardly fearsome trio of Coventry, Southampton and Crystal Palace placed Mike Walker’s position in further jeopardy, and he was sacked following a 0–0 draw at Norwich, of all places. “Duncan never scored for me,” Walker laments now. “If he had, I might not have lost the job – who knows?”
It was not altogether certain that Ferguson was taking his Merseyside sojourn entirely seriously. He and Durrant were holed up in the Moat House hotel on Paradise Street, where Walker, unusually, also stayed. According to Durrant, he was even informed by Walker at a disco in the hotel that he was not being kept on, in what was further proof of the club having become dysfunctional.
It meant Ferguson had lost a valuable ally. “I was a slightly older head than him; he was hard work at times,” recalls Durrant, who has retained an enormous amount of affection for Ferguson. “We did a tour of Liverpool nightspots.”
Walker was not Durrant’s cup of tea. “Elusive,” he says. The manager’s first words to Durrant were hardly encouraging. “So, where do you play, son?” he asked a player who had already made several appearances for Scotland.
It did not augur well, and neither did the misprint on Durrant’s shirt. “Durant” was the name arced across the back, above his number, 22. He has kept it as a souvenir of his experience in Liverpool. Many sensed that Ferguson might not be very long up the road behind him, as Everton continued to struggle and the new striker failed to score.
It was Walker, however, who was next to leave. An international break meant Everton had some time to consider the options, and when they did, one particular choice stood out. Joe Royle had distinguished himself as the manager at Oldham Athletic and, having scored more than 100 goals in 275 appearances for Everton, it was helpful he still enjoyed a strong connection with the Goodison Park faithful, something Walker was never able to command. And there was another reason to appoint Royle, according to the then chairman, Peter Johnson. “We hoped a big old English centre-forward would be able to motivate a big young Scottish centre-forward,” he says.
Without Durrant, Ferguson would sometimes seem a bit lost. He did, though, find a friend in Mark Ward, who had left Everton for Birmingham City at the end of the previous season. The diminutive midfielder was from Liverpool and liked a night out, so he returned home often. On one such occasion, he bumped into Ferguson. “He was charming, even though he had been out drinking all day,” Ward says. “He was out with the night porter from his hotel.”
Had more information been available in the run-up to Royle’s opening match – against Liverpool, of all opponents – then the hope Ferguson might buck up his ideas would surely have seemed forlorn. Ferguson, whose place of residence remained the Moat House hotel, did not believe the change in management necessitated a major change in attitude. He remained hopelessly unprofessional in his outlook.
Ferguson has since given a hair-raising and unusually expansive account of his chosen method of preparation for his first Merseyside derby – and Royle’s debut match in charge. On the Saturday night before the Monday night’s televised encounter with their derby rivals, he hit the town, managing to attract the attention of both a female carouser and members of the Merseyside police force. A girl was sitting in the passenger seat of his car as he headed back to base. He was over the alcohol limit. Ferguson just didn’t help himself.
If one wishes to remain inconspicuous, it is not advisable to drive through a bus station after midnight, having ignored a “no entry” sign. This is particularly true if you happen to be the centre-forward for one of the city’s two professional football teams, and someone valued at many millions of pounds. Something else should have given him pause for thought: an imminent court case for an alleged assault charge committed while already on probation.
Ferguson takes up the story. Speaking from a safe distance of nearly 20 years later and in front of an adoring, non-judgmental audience, at a sportsman’s dinner in Liverpool, he says: “It was quite funny – well, it was not funny – I had been out on the lash, know what I mean?” He remembers knowing he was doomed when the policeman involved turned out to be a Liverpool supporter.
“Have you been drinking?” he asked.
“No, no, no, I haven’t been drinking,” Ferguson replied. He was taken to St Anne Street police station. Naturally, the girl in the front seat next to him was concerned by this turn of events.
“Where are you going, what’s happening?” she asked. Ferguson gave her his hotel room key. “I will be back,” he told her. “I don’t know when, but I will be back.”
At the police station, Ferguson was put in a cell. Fortunately, some “bluenose” police officers, hearing of their striker’s predicament, got involved and handed him jugs of water through the latch while a doctor was called. According to Ferguson, he was only 15 milligrams over the limit, though this surprised him. “I don’t know how that happened – I had drunk five bottles of red wine!”
Ferguson then asked why a doctor was needed. “Because you only blew 15 milligrams over the limit. We are going to do a blood test,” he was told. “I am thinking to myself: ‘Dearie me, take my blood?’” says Ferguson. “I was on the lash on Saturday, on Friday, on Thursday. Don’t take my blood, whatever you do.”
They let him go at six in the morning. “I am sure some of you have been there, like. They gave me my shoes back, I put my laces back in. And I am thinking: ‘I have a derby game tomorrow night, dearie me.’”
It was not just any old derby. It was Ferguson’s maiden Merseyside derby, his first match under a new manager. He returned to the hotel, got a key from reception and then went to his room. “And the girl is only still there, isn’t she?” he smiles.
The next day is derby day. Ferguson is feeling rueful, particularly since so much is at stake. “I feel like I have let everyone down,” he says. “I have had a drink, and I shouldn’t have had a drink.”
The sense of regret helped “fired me up”, he recalls, as did an awareness of the significance of the occasion for Royle personally.
“I am really going to have to pay this fella back,” Ferguson pledged. “It was the night when Ferguson, famously, became the legend before he had become the player. This was Royle’s take on things after the goal that cemented Ferguson’s love affair with Evertonians, and made it seem inconceivable that he would not come to the club permanently.
The striker left the field with fans hanging off the sleeves of his jersey. “Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,” recalls David Prentice. It had seemed a portentous evening. A streaker made an appearance in protest at some comments that had been made by Brian Clough in relation to the Hillsborough disaster.
Ferguson kept his own shirt on this time. Indeed, he threw himself on to his knees at the Gwladys Street End, in front of an advertising hoarding promoting Carling Black Label. In Royle’s eyes, while scoring his first goal for the club, Ferguson had simultaneously written his own epitaph.
“I meant it nicely,” Royle says, when I ask him about the “legend before the player” comment, one that seemed to become ever more perceptive with each passing year of Ferguson’s career. “He’d hardly kicked a ball for the club before I arrived. Until about 50 minutes in against Liverpool on my debut game, I have to confess I was wondering what all the fuss was about.”
Then Everton had a stroke of luck. Neil “Razor” Ruddock, the Liverpool centre-half, kicked Ferguson from behind. “He got angry and he became unplayable,” recalls Royle. Indeed, to use the former Everton manager’s own description, Ferguson “went to war”.
“Duncan had immense ability,” he adds. “And here he was, at a club where the striker has been revered since Dixie Dean, and before. They love their No9s. Alternatively, they can be incredibly hard if you don’t fit the bill. Unlike a lot of gangly boys, Duncan could jump. He could jump, all right.”
On that night, in the 56th minute, Ferguson rose as high as the crossbar, out-jumping both goalkeeper David James and Ruddock, to connect with Andy Hinchcliffe’s corner and give Everton a 1–0 lead.
“That very first night he scored, he changed the match, and probably Everton’s season,” Johnson recalls. “Blackburn Rovers went on to lift the Premier League title. It was a great opportunity for Liverpool to do something – the Manchester United stranglehold had not yet started. And here we were at the bottom of the league, winning 2–0 on a night of raw emotion, with the lights on and the Sky cameras there.”
Few Everton players can have picked such optimal conditions in which to make their mark: a Merseyside derby, live on television, at the famous home end of the ground. To put a seal on the evening, Ferguson then set up Rideout for the second goal with an astute pass across the box.
Royle recalls contemplating taking Ferguson off at half-time. Had he done so, what would have become of him? Already viewed as more trouble than he was worth at Rangers, the news about the drink-driving charge, combined with another goalless appearance which saw him replaced after 45 unimpressive minutes, would surely have seen Ferguson condemned as a waster and a liability in the eyes of the Everton supporters. He might so easily have been packed off back to Ibrox the following morning, with a tag that read, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It could all have been so different.
It looked like he would be returning to Rangers in any case. The news that Ferguson had broken his duck at Everton prompted more questions about his future. “After his three-month loan spell has ended, Duncan is coming back to Ibrox, it’s as straightforward as that,” insisted Walter Smith the following day, but whether he really believed this at the time only he can say.
Ferguson’s loan deal had just over a month to run. He scored against Leeds United in his next but one game and signed a permanent deal with Everton shortly before Christmas.
But Royle is aware that he might not have been given the green light to sign Ferguson had the striker been unable to redeem himself against Liverpool. Royle was told about the breathalyser incident just before they went out on to the pitch, his informant being the club physio at the time, Les Helm. Ferguson’s opening-half performance did little to alter the less than favourable first impression that was already forming in Royle’s mind.
“He’d been so anonymous in the first half that I had it in my mind to replace him,” Royle says. “I was looking at him, thinking: ‘Is he still suffering from the drink?’
“Thankfully, I left him on,” he adds. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”
I can't ever imagine feeling that way about a player again. Maybe it's just an age thing?
By the time Duncan Ferguson had joined Everton on loan in the autumn of 1994 the club’s crowds had dipped; they attracted just over 27,000 when Ferguson made his home debut, against Coventry City. In Scotland, Rangers were playing in front of home crowds of over 40,000, and there was the added attraction of almost guaranteed Champions League participation, even if the Ibrox side had fallen at the first hurdle in both of Ferguson’s seasons there.
Everton, sitting in last place in the Premier League, were not quite so appealing. Paul Rideout, who had made the same journey from Ibrox to Goodison, articulated the contrast when he greeted [Ian] Durrant on the player’s first morning at training at Bellefield, the club’s training ground: “Jesus Christ, Durranty, what the [Poor language removed] are you doing here? Do you not realise the state we’re in?”
It would get worse for Everton before it got better. Three consecutive league defeats against the hardly fearsome trio of Coventry, Southampton and Crystal Palace placed Mike Walker’s position in further jeopardy, and he was sacked following a 0–0 draw at Norwich, of all places. “Duncan never scored for me,” Walker laments now. “If he had, I might not have lost the job – who knows?”
It was not altogether certain that Ferguson was taking his Merseyside sojourn entirely seriously. He and Durrant were holed up in the Moat House hotel on Paradise Street, where Walker, unusually, also stayed. According to Durrant, he was even informed by Walker at a disco in the hotel that he was not being kept on, in what was further proof of the club having become dysfunctional.
It meant Ferguson had lost a valuable ally. “I was a slightly older head than him; he was hard work at times,” recalls Durrant, who has retained an enormous amount of affection for Ferguson. “We did a tour of Liverpool nightspots.”
Walker was not Durrant’s cup of tea. “Elusive,” he says. The manager’s first words to Durrant were hardly encouraging. “So, where do you play, son?” he asked a player who had already made several appearances for Scotland.
It did not augur well, and neither did the misprint on Durrant’s shirt. “Durant” was the name arced across the back, above his number, 22. He has kept it as a souvenir of his experience in Liverpool. Many sensed that Ferguson might not be very long up the road behind him, as Everton continued to struggle and the new striker failed to score.
It was Walker, however, who was next to leave. An international break meant Everton had some time to consider the options, and when they did, one particular choice stood out. Joe Royle had distinguished himself as the manager at Oldham Athletic and, having scored more than 100 goals in 275 appearances for Everton, it was helpful he still enjoyed a strong connection with the Goodison Park faithful, something Walker was never able to command. And there was another reason to appoint Royle, according to the then chairman, Peter Johnson. “We hoped a big old English centre-forward would be able to motivate a big young Scottish centre-forward,” he says.
Without Durrant, Ferguson would sometimes seem a bit lost. He did, though, find a friend in Mark Ward, who had left Everton for Birmingham City at the end of the previous season. The diminutive midfielder was from Liverpool and liked a night out, so he returned home often. On one such occasion, he bumped into Ferguson. “He was charming, even though he had been out drinking all day,” Ward says. “He was out with the night porter from his hotel.”
Had more information been available in the run-up to Royle’s opening match – against Liverpool, of all opponents – then the hope Ferguson might buck up his ideas would surely have seemed forlorn. Ferguson, whose place of residence remained the Moat House hotel, did not believe the change in management necessitated a major change in attitude. He remained hopelessly unprofessional in his outlook.
Ferguson has since given a hair-raising and unusually expansive account of his chosen method of preparation for his first Merseyside derby – and Royle’s debut match in charge. On the Saturday night before the Monday night’s televised encounter with their derby rivals, he hit the town, managing to attract the attention of both a female carouser and members of the Merseyside police force. A girl was sitting in the passenger seat of his car as he headed back to base. He was over the alcohol limit. Ferguson just didn’t help himself.
If one wishes to remain inconspicuous, it is not advisable to drive through a bus station after midnight, having ignored a “no entry” sign. This is particularly true if you happen to be the centre-forward for one of the city’s two professional football teams, and someone valued at many millions of pounds. Something else should have given him pause for thought: an imminent court case for an alleged assault charge committed while already on probation.
Ferguson takes up the story. Speaking from a safe distance of nearly 20 years later and in front of an adoring, non-judgmental audience, at a sportsman’s dinner in Liverpool, he says: “It was quite funny – well, it was not funny – I had been out on the lash, know what I mean?” He remembers knowing he was doomed when the policeman involved turned out to be a Liverpool supporter.
“Have you been drinking?” he asked.
“No, no, no, I haven’t been drinking,” Ferguson replied. He was taken to St Anne Street police station. Naturally, the girl in the front seat next to him was concerned by this turn of events.
“Where are you going, what’s happening?” she asked. Ferguson gave her his hotel room key. “I will be back,” he told her. “I don’t know when, but I will be back.”
At the police station, Ferguson was put in a cell. Fortunately, some “bluenose” police officers, hearing of their striker’s predicament, got involved and handed him jugs of water through the latch while a doctor was called. According to Ferguson, he was only 15 milligrams over the limit, though this surprised him. “I don’t know how that happened – I had drunk five bottles of red wine!”
Ferguson then asked why a doctor was needed. “Because you only blew 15 milligrams over the limit. We are going to do a blood test,” he was told. “I am thinking to myself: ‘Dearie me, take my blood?’” says Ferguson. “I was on the lash on Saturday, on Friday, on Thursday. Don’t take my blood, whatever you do.”
They let him go at six in the morning. “I am sure some of you have been there, like. They gave me my shoes back, I put my laces back in. And I am thinking: ‘I have a derby game tomorrow night, dearie me.’”
It was not just any old derby. It was Ferguson’s maiden Merseyside derby, his first match under a new manager. He returned to the hotel, got a key from reception and then went to his room. “And the girl is only still there, isn’t she?” he smiles.
The next day is derby day. Ferguson is feeling rueful, particularly since so much is at stake. “I feel like I have let everyone down,” he says. “I have had a drink, and I shouldn’t have had a drink.”
The sense of regret helped “fired me up”, he recalls, as did an awareness of the significance of the occasion for Royle personally.
“I am really going to have to pay this fella back,” Ferguson pledged. “It was the night when Ferguson, famously, became the legend before he had become the player. This was Royle’s take on things after the goal that cemented Ferguson’s love affair with Evertonians, and made it seem inconceivable that he would not come to the club permanently.
The striker left the field with fans hanging off the sleeves of his jersey. “Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,” recalls David Prentice. It had seemed a portentous evening. A streaker made an appearance in protest at some comments that had been made by Brian Clough in relation to the Hillsborough disaster.
Ferguson kept his own shirt on this time. Indeed, he threw himself on to his knees at the Gwladys Street End, in front of an advertising hoarding promoting Carling Black Label. In Royle’s eyes, while scoring his first goal for the club, Ferguson had simultaneously written his own epitaph.
“I meant it nicely,” Royle says, when I ask him about the “legend before the player” comment, one that seemed to become ever more perceptive with each passing year of Ferguson’s career. “He’d hardly kicked a ball for the club before I arrived. Until about 50 minutes in against Liverpool on my debut game, I have to confess I was wondering what all the fuss was about.”
Then Everton had a stroke of luck. Neil “Razor” Ruddock, the Liverpool centre-half, kicked Ferguson from behind. “He got angry and he became unplayable,” recalls Royle. Indeed, to use the former Everton manager’s own description, Ferguson “went to war”.
“Duncan had immense ability,” he adds. “And here he was, at a club where the striker has been revered since Dixie Dean, and before. They love their No9s. Alternatively, they can be incredibly hard if you don’t fit the bill. Unlike a lot of gangly boys, Duncan could jump. He could jump, all right.”
On that night, in the 56th minute, Ferguson rose as high as the crossbar, out-jumping both goalkeeper David James and Ruddock, to connect with Andy Hinchcliffe’s corner and give Everton a 1–0 lead.
“That very first night he scored, he changed the match, and probably Everton’s season,” Johnson recalls. “Blackburn Rovers went on to lift the Premier League title. It was a great opportunity for Liverpool to do something – the Manchester United stranglehold had not yet started. And here we were at the bottom of the league, winning 2–0 on a night of raw emotion, with the lights on and the Sky cameras there.”
Few Everton players can have picked such optimal conditions in which to make their mark: a Merseyside derby, live on television, at the famous home end of the ground. To put a seal on the evening, Ferguson then set up Rideout for the second goal with an astute pass across the box.
Royle recalls contemplating taking Ferguson off at half-time. Had he done so, what would have become of him? Already viewed as more trouble than he was worth at Rangers, the news about the drink-driving charge, combined with another goalless appearance which saw him replaced after 45 unimpressive minutes, would surely have seen Ferguson condemned as a waster and a liability in the eyes of the Everton supporters. He might so easily have been packed off back to Ibrox the following morning, with a tag that read, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It could all have been so different.
It looked like he would be returning to Rangers in any case. The news that Ferguson had broken his duck at Everton prompted more questions about his future. “After his three-month loan spell has ended, Duncan is coming back to Ibrox, it’s as straightforward as that,” insisted Walter Smith the following day, but whether he really believed this at the time only he can say.
Ferguson’s loan deal had just over a month to run. He scored against Leeds United in his next but one game and signed a permanent deal with Everton shortly before Christmas.
But Royle is aware that he might not have been given the green light to sign Ferguson had the striker been unable to redeem himself against Liverpool. Royle was told about the breathalyser incident just before they went out on to the pitch, his informant being the club physio at the time, Les Helm. Ferguson’s opening-half performance did little to alter the less than favourable first impression that was already forming in Royle’s mind.
“He’d been so anonymous in the first half that I had it in my mind to replace him,” Royle says. “I was looking at him, thinking: ‘Is he still suffering from the drink?’
“Thankfully, I left him on,” he adds. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”
