Welcome home, Dunc: Ferguson returns to Scotland with Inverness - Aviemore meetings, scene of Rangers hat-trick, no need to call Carlo

From Bar-L to Tuttie’s Neuk. Duncan Ferguson has left his mark in many places in Scottish football, including at Gayfield, where he resumes his career north of the Border this weekend as the surprise new manager of Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Duncan Ferguson is unveiled as the new manager of Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

He scored a hat-trick at Arbroath's ground on his last appearances there towards the end of an ill- fated spell at Rangers. It was a League Cup tie, which Rangers won 6-1: August 1994.

A few weeks later he came on as sub towards the end of a 3-0 win over Hearts at Ibrox. That cameo came on 11 September. At the time, the game was significant for being the first time Craig Levein and Graeme Hogg had been reunited in the middle of the Hearts defence since their on-field punch-up in a friendly v Raith Rovers. But it has since stood as Ferguson’s last competitive involvement in Scotland unless you count appearances in the at Glasgow Sheriff court and then the Supreme Court in Edinburgh, which were competitive enough but always likely to end the way they ultimately did, which was with Ferguson’s incarceration.

Three months – he served 44 days - in Barlinnie, the aforementioned Bar-L, or Bar-Hell as it was also sometimes known, and once described as toughest prison in western Europe. No wonder he felt bitterness towards Scotland and towards Scottish football, or at least its governors.

Ferguson gets the better of Mark Reilly during a match for Rangers in 1994.

Although it’s not as straightforward as some mistakenly seem to think it is. He played twice more for Scotland after his release from prison and after succeeding in quashing the supplementary 12-match ban the SFA had sought to impose on him, something Ferguson’s legal team argued was double jeopardy. But they were unhappy appearances – both 0-0s, against Austria and then Estonia in Monaco, following the-game-that-never-was in Tallinn.

He never did score for Scotland – although he came close, particularly with a spectacular overhead kick against Germany brilliantly saved by Andreas Kopke (and no, it definitely didn’t hit the bar) while playing up front with John Robertson, now his sporting director at Inverness.

Neither did Ferguson ever play for Scotland at Hampden. But he will manage there with Inverness Caledonian Thistle on 9 December, as the Highlands side return to the national stadium for the first time since last season’s Scottish Cup final defeat to Celtic for a Championship fixture against Queen’s Park.

This is just one in a series of dates to ring in red pen on the calendar. There’s the return to Tannadice on 4 November – although more likely, it will be 3 November, if BBC Scotland know what’s good for them – and they surely do. Ferguson is box office.

Or how about the clash at the start of December against Raith Rovers, the team against whom Ferguson came to such desperate grief at Ibrox on 16 April 1994. I didn’t have to look that date up, nor the time: 3.35pm. Two men crossed each other’s path in a headbutt incident lasting a matter of seconds. They have been inextricably linked ever since.

Both Ferguson and Jock McStay, the Raith right back he was accused, charged and later convicted of assaulting while already on probation, lost so much that afternoon. Ferguson, just 22 at the time of the incident, lost his liberty in a place where it was necessary for Willie McGurk, the physical education supervisor at the prison, to warn his staff: “Listen this is a £4 million footballer coming in – if he goes out anything less than a £4m footballer, we could be in bloody trouble”.

But then there’s McStay, dropped like a stone by his club for the crime of being hit on the head by Ferguson, and who suffered bouts of depression he later revealed to me as he bumped around the lower reaches of the game at the likes of Portadown and Albion Rovers. A cousin of Paul and Willie McStay, he now works on the maintenance staff at Celtic Park.

But this is all now backdrop and yesterdays and while impossible to ignore, particularly given Ferguson’s return to this orbit, it is the kind of stuff he will be keen to move on from.

He has already crossed one bridge in terms of the SFA, under whose auspices he qualified as the first-rate coach Carlo Ancelotti is happy to vouch for. His testimonial is one of the most eye-catching ones on Ferguson’s CV. “Do you want to speak to Carlo?” he asked Scot Gardiner, the Inverness CEO during the recent negotiations, which reached a happy conclusion in Aviemore as the pair finally shook on a deal that caused not just Ancelotti’s eyebrow to arch. “No, you’re all right, I don’t think there’s any need to bother Carlo,” Gardiner replied.

The world is not quite ready for the paths of Real Madrid and Inverness to collide. It’s just getting used to Ferguson’s introduction to Highlands life. He has signed a three-year contract, two-and-a half-years shorter than the deal he agreed with Forest Green Rovers in January, but still a major commitment from Inverness.

There is no contractual obligation to eat vegan pies although there will be a temptation that’s likely impossible to resist for visiting English sports writers profiling Ferguson to mention the Loch Ness Monster.

Inverness are where Forest Green Rovers were when Ferguson took over, which is plum bottom of their league. No one can accuse the Scot of taking the easy way out any longer, which is something that was thrown at him – albeit from those standing a long distance away – during the years he worked in what some termed the comfortable surroundings of the Everton academy, always doing well but not seemingly quite well enough to get the top job during intermittent caretaker stints. The latest of these was just two seasons ago, when he lost a tight game 1-0 to Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa.

He’s been getting used to the dugout and media chores for some time now but it feels notable, and a little unreal, that the places he will be answering questions about poor goals, offsides and – hopefully – breathless last-minute wins include Stark’s Park, East End Park and Cappielow as well as Inverness’ own Caledonian stadium, where he was unveiled this morning. “Some view!” he said as he gazed over the Moray Firth estuary after he crested the hill at Inverness on Monday night for the first time since a family caravan holiday in Nairn as a child.

Ferguson's career never took him to Inverness, who entered the Scottish league via a merger just as he was preparing to depart it in 1994. It’s certainly a better view than the one he had to endure in a cell on Barlinnie’s D Hall as a young man, interrupted. Welcome home, Dunc.