SIR ALEX FERGUSON has opened up on the "most important game of his life" - when he scored a hat-trick for St Johnstone against Rangers.
The legendary Manchester United and Aberdeen manager was playing part-time football with the Perth outfit while working in Govan during the 1960s.
In a new documentary that is being streamed on Amazon, Sir Alex has detailed that he almost quit football before being given his big break in the game.
“I was parttime with St Johnstone and I was having to travel up to Perth from Glasgow three times a week,” Britain's greatest ever manager explained. “That was a nightmare for me. I was getting home at half 1 in the morning then up at 6.
“I was getting despondent about the football side of things because I wasn’t a first team player all the time. My career was going down the pan and I started to go off the rails a bit.
“I was going out in the town and I was going out on Friday nights – the day before a game. My dad kept saying ‘where are you going’ and I said I was going out to the dancing.
“He would say ‘you’ve got a game tomorrow, you can’t go to the dancing if you have a game tomorrow’. I said it was with the reserves and it doesn’t mean a lot. He would say ‘it means everything’.
“That is when we fell out and it got to a point where he said ‘go your own way and we will see what happens’. We weren’t talking to one another so for two years between 1961 and 1963 we didn’t talk.
“One night I went out and I got drunk. I ended up in a fight and I ended up in the jail. I went to court. Got fined £3 and I was a bit of a black sheep.
“That period has always been in the back of my head and I have always regretted it. Here’s me with that sort of background and upbringing I had. I surrendered, I said to myself I’m finished. Football is going nowhere.”
Sir Alex, 79, then took out papers to start a new life in Canada due to a lack of game time for Saints at Muirton Park.
But in an incredible turn of fate his football career was given the chance to take off as he was thrown into action against his boyhood heroes Rangers.
Sir Alex continued: “I took out papers to emigrate to Canada. I got the forms and all the rest of it then that break in my life came. It was fate. The most important game of my life.
“I got my brothers girlfriend to phone the manager and tell him I had the flu. We were kidding on that she was my mother. I got home about 7pm and my mum was going absolutely berserk.
“The manager had sent her a telegram saying that he knew that wasn’t her who phoned him. She said I was to go and apologise right away. I had the handkerchief over the phone pretending I had a bad cold.
“The manager said ‘you better report tomorrow at the Buchanan Street hotel because you are playing against Rangers’.
“I go to the game and I scored a hattrick. Unbelievable, eh? I was the first person to score a hattrick at Ibrox. Nobody had ever done it before.
“I wanted to go home and see my dad. I knew he would be as proud as a peacock. My mother was all excited and said go and talk to him.
“I said ‘what do you think dad?’ He goes ‘alright you were okay’. Then he starts ‘that is the player I know. Shooting on sight’ and we were back pals.”
Sir Alex signed for Dunfermline the following summer and then went on to join Rangers for a Scottish record fee of £65,000.
He added: “That changed my life. It was the biggest break of my life. I say that to people often now. If there is a big opportunity you might only get one in your life.
“That was mine and the one that mattered to me. I made a vow from that moment on that I was not looking back. I was committed. Nothing but football for me.”
Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and Ireland.
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