August 17 - Welcome back Big Dunc

“DUNCAN Ferguson elbowed me in the neck three times and I was beginning to get a bit angry. I swore at him in Austrian and I know he couldn’t possibly have understood it. Even so, he suddenly swung round and thumped me in the stomach. He got sent off, but I began to appreciate how he earned his reputation as a hard man. It was a nice punch, I have to say.” Wigan’s Paul Scharner learns how football is played Big Dunc style.

Some players and clubs just seem to be a good fit from the word go: Eric Cantona and Manchester United, Kevin Keegan and Newcastle, and Billy Bremner and Leeds were all player/club combos that worked right from the off, despite there being no prior connections between the two. Cantona was French, Keegan a Yorkshireman and Bremner a Scot, but all clicked immediately with these clubs and became part of the. Duncan Ferguson and Everton can be added to the list, as his former manager Joe Royle said: “Duncan became a legend before he became a player at Everton.”

Initially brought in to the club on load from Rangers in 1994 to try and help the club stay in the top flight, Dunc was then bought outright for £4.4m and immediately made an impact at Goodison, scoring in a 2-0 derby win over Liverpool on his debut proper, and helping the team win the FA Cup.

Despite problems with injuries, Big Dunc’s goals were keeping Everton in the Premier League and the fans loved him just as much for his style as for his goalscoring. Every defender’s worst nightmare (Sami Hypia and John Terry both named him as their toughest opponent), Ferguson was more like a Challenger tank than a footballer and would fling himself at the ball to try and score, no matter who or what was in the way.

The marriage between club and player looked a happy one, but dark forces were conspiring to bring it all to an end. In 1998, with Everton in serious financial straits, Dunc was sold to Newcastle in a secret deal hatched when the two sides were playing each other. The man with an Everton tattoo had been sold for £8m without manager Walter Smith’s knowledge.

After two years on Tyneside, it was today in 2000 that Big Dunc re-signed for Everton for £3.75m to the delight of the player himself.

He said: “I couldn’t imagine it in pre-season. I was, at the time, very happy at Newcastle but since then an opportunity has arisen to come back and I’m delighted. All the fans know how I feel about the club.

“There was never a doubt in my mind once Newcastle had decided they no longer required my services.

“When I first came here the fans just took to me right away. Everton’s in my blood - it has always been there and this opportunity is fantastic for myself.

“I never asked for a transfer. I was happy before at Everton and I am more than happy to come back.”

His second spell at the club was not as effective as his first as a continual series of injuries hampered his playing time. By the time David Moyes had taken over as manager, Ferguson’s role had become that of super-sub as he spent more time on the bench than he did assaulting defenders. He still managed a couple more red cards though to equal Patrick Viera’s record of eight since the beginning of the Premiership. His most notable was an away game at Leicester where he strangled Steffen Freund.

He scored his last goal in his last game for the club at the end of the 2005/06 season when he knocked in the rebound after West Brom’s Tomasz Kuszczak had saved his penalty.

Have a look at Dunc’s time with the Toffees below, and come back tomorrow for the tale about a man whose grip on reality was about as tenuous as Dunc’s grip on his temperament. Also on this day, remember when Beckham did this?

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading ...