Gerry Cox: Some wouldn’t call Alex Ferguson one of the good guys, but he was a gent to me

His reputation with reporters was fearsome, so naturally there was some trepidation from me as a young writer tasked with getting his thoughts each week, writes Gerry Cox

]Alex Ferguson passes his 80th birthday with his place in the annals of football history already secure. Picture: Martin Rickett

Forget hiding in plain sight — Alex Ferguson once told me he was terrified about being found hiding in Plainmoor, home of Torquay United.

It is impossible that any football fan would fail to recognise in their midst Alex Ferguson, who turns 80 this New Year’s Eve.

So you can imagine the levels of subterfuge involved when, back in his early days as Manchester United manager, he wanted to attend a Torquay United match incognito in order to make a personal assessment of their rising star Lee Sharpe. An application for a guest ticket would have raised suspicions that United were interested in a transfer, and instantly raised the asking price.

So Fergie donned a balaclava, turned up his coat collar a la Cantona, and bought a ticket to stand on the terraces.

Although he was satisfied that he had seen enough to sign the winger who became a double-winner and England international for a bargain €210,000, Ferguson admitted he feared being twigged.

“The scouting reports were good but I had to see him for myself, so I went ‘cloak-and-dagger’ style. I was expecting to be found out at any moment. It was hard to keep my head down and my mouth shut!” he later told me with a laugh when I used to ‘ghost’ a weekly column with him back in the early 1990s.

Big regional newspapers across Scotland, England, and farther afield would take his thoughts on a weekly basis.

Back then he was some way from becoming the most successful manager the British Isles has ever seen, with just one FA Cup after four seasons at United. But he was already one of the most famous faces and voices in football.

Having briefly broken the Celtic-Rangers duopoly by making Aberdeen Scotland’s most successful club for a period, much was expected of him in Manchester, after eschewing the temptations of Tottenham Hotspur, who also wanted him.

But Ferguson famously got off to a bad start and instantly fell out with most of the media that covered the club.

He later told me that one of the most important moves he made in his early time at United was to ‘throw out’ the pressman, agents, and other ‘hangers-on’ as he called them from the training ground.

His reputation with reporters was fearsome, so naturally there was some trepidation from me as a young writer tasked with getting his thoughts each week and converting them into an accurate first-person piece.

In the pre-Premier League and pre-Sky Sports era, most weekend games kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday, so Sunday afternoon was the best time to ring him. I was warned it might take weeks, even months, to gain his trust, and so it proved.

The common ground we found was Dave Mackay, the great Spurs and Scotland player, who was Fergie’s hero growing up, and a great favourite of my own father, a Spurs supporter.

I knew Dave a little in those days. It helped too that, like Fergie, I had working-class roots and been apprenticed in a trade before moving into football.

Alex Ferguson column

Once I had earned his trust, he felt he could confide his true feelings on certain subjects and people, knowing they would stay off the record. I will not divulge the things he said about some people in the game and the media, but needless to say, they were often far from complimentary.

I remember him mocking some of my peers in media conferences, using me as an unwitting ‘assistant’.

After delivering a series of withering replies to questions from the Manchester press pack following United’s win over Nottingham Forest in the League Cup final, he responded to a straightforward query from me with a pointed: “At last — an intelligent question from a proper journalist. How are you Gerry?”

You can imagine the reaction this rookie reporter got from the seasoned hacks! Later, he laughed: “Did you see the looks on their faces?”

Another time, in Sweden at Euro 92, I ran into him ahead of a Denmark press conference. He was staying in the area and popped in to see Peter Schmeichel. We were catching up over tea and biscuits when a prominent radio reporter interrupted us in a bid to bring their long-running feud to an end. Fergie was having none of it.

“Will you fuck off and leave us alone,” he said, switching instantly from charm to intimidation. “Can’t you see I’m having a chat with my pal here?”

As soon as the reporter was gone, he was laughing again, but it was not always sweetness and light, although I never got the full hairdryer treatment reserved for some of my peers.

Only once did he ask to change my copy, which I used to send through for checking overnight by fax.

He needed to make a small change at United’s insistence, but I was out playing golf on my day off, and when he rang my home landline — I didn’t have a mobile then — he had to leave messages.

The first was straightforward, but the second was more curt, the third somewhat less polite and by the fourth he was clearly furious and slammed down the phone.

Fortunately when I finally got home to return his calls, and explain we could make the changes without a problem, he had calmed down.

It was not the reason we ended the column a few months later. The feedback from my editor, and the regional papers, was that he had been doing it for a few years and they thought there was little left for him to say.

Of course, this was a year or so before United ended a long wait to win the title and begin a period of unprecedented success.

We remained on good terms, though, still friendly whenever we have met up since, at football dinners, social occasions or otherwise.

At the 2017 Champions League final I was in the media mixed zone waiting for Cristiano Ronaldo, who had made a winning return with Real Madrid to Cardiff, where he had won his first United medal 13 years earlier.

Fergie, as a Uefa ambassador, was walking past on his way to give Ronaldo his man of the match award when he spotted me, put his arm around my shoulder and said: “How’re you doing Gerry — still one of the good guys?” to bemused looks from the other journalists.

I’m certain not many reporters would call Fergie one of the good guys, but for me he has never been a bad guy.

Happy 80th, Alex Ferguson.