Itâ??s nice to see Ian Ferguson do well in Australia

[Bears 0]

http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/a-league/perth-glory-coach-ian-ferguson-reveals-the-day-he-said-no-to-man-united-boss-sir-alex-ferguson/story-e6frf4gl-1226335396404

 

Guns N' Roses, Linkin Park, Dean Martin. It might be an odd assortment but that's the soundtrack to Perth Glory's fairytale revival that has taken the club from the depths of the A-League table at Christmas into Sunday's grand final against Brisbane Roar.

 

Around the same time as Glory's luck began to turn at the beginning of the new year, coach Ian Ferguson began giving his players' pre-match warm up a miss and instead sat in the rooms alone with his thoughts and a ghetto blaster playing a variety of mainly 1980's hits.

 

The superstitious Ferguson, who played most of his career with the right side of his shirt hanging out after considering it a lucky charm when he once scored a goal, figured he was on to a good thing and stuck with it.

 

He jokes that he wanted to stay in the nib Stadium changeroom pre-match to avoid the abuse he was copping from the crowd and later, more seriously, confirmed "that probably would have been a little part of it to be honest".

 

But Glory has lost just three times in its past 18 outings ahead of Sunday's big match, with Ferguson the first to admit he'd never have believed a grand final appearance was possible mid-season.

 

"It would be a dream come true if we could win it, because we've been through so much this year. It would be a fairytale," he said.

 

 

 

 

"I'd have said you were crazy if somebody said we were going to reach the grand final. My plan's always been that I want to make Perth Glory a top-six regular and build from there."

 

While the back-from-the-dead revival since Christmas has on the surface been the span of the turnaround, it is the 18-month rebuilding process since taking over the top job from Dave Mitchell in October 2010 that fills him with the most pride.

 

Ferguson went to owner Tony Sage and told him things would get worse before they got better and he would be proved spectacularly right as Glory limped to the end of the season winning just two of 21 games after the coaching handover.

 

"At times I felt like a dead-man walking when I first took over. It was very difficult, no matter what you did or what you tried," he said.

 

 

"If I'm being honest, I think there were players there that weren't playing for me and I probably never had the dressingroom. There was a massive cloud hanging over the place.

 

"When I took over I knew there was a lot of things I had to change. That was the turnaround for me.

 

"No matter who came in here, it was a massive, massive turnaround to get it right."

 

It was a decision made a decade ago, nearing the tail end of his illustrious career, to go on "a big adventure" for a year or two that led Ferguson down the coaching path.

 

 

"It was either America or Australia," he said.

 

"We turned up with three kids and four suitcases and a wife and we've been here ever since."

 

Ferguson, the second-youngest of six children, grew up in Glasgow next to two significant landmarks.

 

"I grew up a stone's throw away from Celtic Park and right next to a cemetery," he said.

 

It's hard to know which one of them his late father Jim, a passionate Rangers man who used to take a young Ian to games, would have found more confronting.

 

 

At 19, Ferguson would defy Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson to live his dream by signing for Rangers making his father the proudest man in Scotland.

 

"He had a wee tear in his eye. I think we both had a tear in our eye that night," Ferguson said.

 

Drafted into the Aberdeen youth set-up as a 12-year-old, he toiled for four years before being called into then-Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson's office one day as a 16-year-old and told he was being let go.

 

"He told me I wasn't up to what the club was looking for I was too small, too slow and I never had the physical presence," he said.

 

Three years later he had developed into a more mature midfielder, had a string of admirers and was now being wooed by the coach who told him he wasn't good enough new Manchester United boss Ferguson.

 

Ian Ferguson was to be shown around the United training base and began the drive from Glasgow to Manchester with his agent.

 

Half an hour into the journey he turned the car around and went home. He already knew what he wanted.

 

"I knew if I went down there they'd maybe persuade me to sign," Ferguson said.

 

"The next day I got a phone call from Sir Alex and he said 'look, don't be silly, you'll never get an opportunity like this again'.

 

"I said I wanted to go and play for Rangers. That was my club. That was the team I loved."

 

Ferguson was elevated into the club's Hall of Fame after a 12-year stint that included 336 games and 10 Scottish League titles.

[Bears 0]

He got beat 2-1 in the final with a V dodgy sounding pen in the 94th minute

 

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/football/football-match-centre/live-roar-v-glory-20120422-1xepf.html

[26th of foot 5,833]

When Fergie left Rangers, he headed to East End Park. His first competitive game for the Pars was the opening game of the season against ra Sellik. It finished 0-0, but the remarkable feature of the match was the constant stream of vile sectarian abuse dished out by TGFITW. So much so, MON was questioned on it post-match, his reply was anodyne, "Ferguson is old enough and big enough to take it".

 

I remember the Herald's Monday match report penned by ra Bhoy in Corduroy. He had spent the previous year pleading with MON to do lunch, it was obsessive, unrequited love. Thus, in the match report he parcelled Fergie's vile haranguing and the beloved MON's response in a mitigating one line, "Ian Ferguson has all the charm of a child molestor".

 

I hope that Fergie returns to these shores one day and does well with Graham Spiers.