If you have no interest in football look away now but further to yesterday’s post (‘Friends reunited’) here's the ‘lost’ interview with Alex Ferguson.
It was published in Campus, the Aberdeen student newspaper I co-edited from 1978-80, and the reason I was surprised to read it is because I genuinely don’t remember publishing it.
Inspired by Richard Ingrams’ Private Eye, our modus operandi was to relentlessly mock student politicians with a combination of gossip, irreverent comment and bad taste jokes.
The interview with the-then manager of Aberdeen Football Club was unusual because it fell far outside our normal house style. It was in fact proper journalism!
At the time of the interview (January 1980) Ferguson had been manager of Aberdeen for just 18 months but was already under pressure.
In December 1979 the club had lost the Scottish League Cup final to Dundee United (3-0 in a replay). By the end of the season however Ferguson’s emerging team had won the Scottish League for the first time since 1955 and for only the second time in the club’s history.
Under Ferguson Aberdeen were to win multiple trophies including the Scottish League (three times), the Scottish Cup (four times), the Scottish League Cup (twice) and the European Cup Winners Cup, beating Real Madrid in the final.
But that all happened after the Campus interview which was written by a student called Mike Staniforth who was a contributor rather than a member of staff.
Anyway, given how famous Ferguson was to become as the most successful manager in the English Premier League, I thought some of you might like to read it.
The headline – 'Alex's Korner' – was a nod to Alexis Korner, sometimes referred to as the 'founding father of British blues'. A cult figure in the UK music scene, in 1980 Korner was probably better known than the man who later became Sir Alex Ferguson. Quite ironic, really.
Alex's Korner
Alex Ferguson played for Rangers, Dunfermline and Falkirk before turning to football management, and came to Aberdeen a year and a half ago after a lengthy spell as St Mirren's boss. He talked to Mike Staniforth about his job and the game in general.
OFFICIALLY the manager's job starts around nine o'clock in the morning and finishes early evening but Alex Ferguson candidly admits that he never gets away from the game and the telephone incessantly intrudes on family privacy.
At Pittodrie his job is mainly split between coaching and administrative duties. Coaching encompasses all the teams but special emphasis is laid upon the younger players, "the life blood of the club", and administrative duties include meeting the press, scouts, directors, other members of the managerial staff and unsettled players.
Despite such arduous and diverse commitments 'Fergy' feels little pressure. "Losing matches [as in the recent 3-0 defeat at the hands of Dundee United] hurts my pride more than making me worry about the future," he says, and the close alliance between the staff and the directors prevents such damaging scenes as witnessed recently at Aston Villa.
The club's outlook is encouragingly optimistic and shows a real determination to silence those critics who dwell tediously on the fact that the team has failed to win any competition since the 76-77 season, despite reaching two cup finals in the last two years.
There are factors other than team performance of course that contributed to this inconsistency. The geographical location of the town means that few people are prepared to travel to away games and the manager's position has been held by five different men in the last ten years, but Alex Ferguson is here to stay and has set his sights on achieving success at the club, dislodging the 'Old Firm' of Celtic and Rangers in the process.
Ferguson holds no ambition to manage the international side or to move south so he has set his sights on becoming a permanent fixture at Pittodrie. This is highlighted by the fact that he refuses to be drawn on questions about the international side under Jock Stein nor on the performances of any other club.
"I've got my job to do," he says, "and they've got theirs so I'm not going to tell them how to go about it. I've enough problems of my own."
And so he devotes all his energies to the improvement of the club in all its aspects. The recent all-seating arrangements in the stadium, for instance, has been of particular interest. He hails it as a "tremendous success" in stamping out crowd trouble and no-one complains about this season's average gate of 16,000.
Everything is geared to entertainment, perhaps in response to successful innovations on the American soccer scene. Admittedly there are no majorettes ("It's all very well in a good climate but you wouldn't get majorettes here on a Saturday afternoon in December") but there is a trouble-free ground, pre-match entertainment of junior soccer and an Aberdeen team committed to the positive attacking football advocated by their manager.
So what does the future hold? With freedom of contract looming it will become increasingly difficult to persuade players to remain in Aberdeen and Ferguson admits that he would be "hard pressed to replace good young players like [Steve] Archibald, [Gordon] Strachan and [Alex] McLeish", but the club offers realistic wages and the chance to develop the individual flair that is perhaps suppressed by many English league clubs.
The reduced size of the [Scottish] Premier division means that "there is now something at stake in every match, right until the end of the season", and the supremacy of the 'Old Firm' is beginning to be more seriously challenged so Scottish football is at its most competitive for some years.
By advocating a positive approach to the game Fergy hopes to bring in the crowds and obtain the necessary results, justifying the optimism and potential that pervades the club.
In 1986 Ferguson took the Scotland national team to the World Cup in Mexico. He left Aberdeen in November 1986 when he was appointed manager of Manchester United, a job he held until he retired in 2013. During that period he became the most successful manager in English Premier League history. For his achievements he received a knighthood in 1999.