Tragic Scots FA Cup hero who took his own life

TOMORROW Cardiff City will play their first FA Cup quarter-final since the seminal year of 1927 when they famously went on to win the great trophy and take it out of England for the first and, to this day, only time.

The Welsh club's Wembley success over Arsenal nearly 81 years ago produced some priceless pieces of FA Cup trivia in addition to the obvious one about the winners' non-English status. It was the first final to be broadcast on BBC radio, for example, and the first to be preceded by the community singing of Abide With Me. However, these facts and tidbits give new meaning to the word trivial when compared with the most exceptional story associated with the game – the remarkable and ultimately tragic tale of the Scotsman who scored Cardiff's cup-winning goal.

Hughie Ferguson was one of the greatest British players of the pre-war years, a prolific goalscorer who was renowned for his modesty and sense of fair play. He broke scoring records and transfer records but by 1930, less than three years after the greatest moment of his career, he was a broken man and took his own life after a training session at Dundee's Dens Park. He was just 33.

Football is by its very nature a game of highs and lows, but seldom do these materialise in such extreme forms.

The sombre details of his premature death will always dominate the Ferguson legend, but his feats on the pitch alone suggest that he is one of Scotland's most overlooked players from the first half of the 20th century. His final goal average of 0.855 per game is more impressive than those who are considered to be the greatest early exponents of the goalscoring art, such as Steve Bloomer, Hughie Gallacher and, a generation later, Jimmy Greaves.

He would go on to become one of a select band of players to score more than 350 senior British goals but amazingly was never capped by Scotland, with forwards like Rangers' Andrew Cunningham and Middlesbrough's Andy Wilson preferred by the national selectors. He did, however, play three times for the Scottish League.

Ferguson was born in Glasgow in 1896 and first played for Parkhead Juniors before joining Motherwell, where he would become a folk hero. He was the leading Scottish league scorer in three consecutive seasons between 1917 and 1921, netting 111 goals in 284 matches and a phenomenal 43 in 1920/21. By 1925 Ferguson's tally had reached 284, which remains a club record to this day.

Unsurprisingly these feats attracted suitors and, in November 1925, Motherwell accepted a record amount of 4,000 for their prize asset from Cardiff City, who were then a well established side in the English top league. The morning of his departure south witnessed extraordinary scenes in the Lanarkshire town. The steelworks closed down for half-an-hour and workers downed tools to line the streets and wave off their favourite footballing son.

Ferguson proved to be a revelation at Ninian Park and is regarded as Cardiff's greatest ever scorer. His all-competition total of 32 in the golden season of 1926/27 stood until March 2003 when Rob Earnshaw surpassed it. However, his achievement of 1928, when he scored five in a 7-0 win over Burnley remains to this day. He scored 91 goals in 138 games for the Welsh club naturally including the one notched at the Empire Stadium on 30 April 1927. It was only the fifth year the showpiece had been held at the new national stadium in Wembley and among the 91,206 in attendance that day were King George V, Winston Churchill and former Prime Minister David Lloyd-George.

The injection of thousands from the valleys, a tribe not averse to flexing their vocal chords given any excuse, no doubt resulted in a stirring rendition of Abide With Me and the hymn would become a pre-match staple from that year on. High in the stadium's rafters the man from the Beeb was also starting a noble tradition with the first live commentary of the match (the Scottish Cup final of the same year was also the first to be broadcast live). The week's Radio Times had printed a numbered grid of the Wembley pitch to aid listeners and the commentary gave origin to the phrase "back to square one".

A dour, defensive stalemate panned out until the 74th minute when, collecting a throw from the right, Ferguson hurried a tame shot toward the Arsenal goal. Dan Lewis, the Gunners goalkeeper, appeared to collect the ball but, under pressure from the advancing Len Davies, clumsily allowed the ball to roll through his grasp; in a desperate attempt to retrieve the ball, Lewis only succeeded in knocking the ball with his elbow into his own net.

Ferguson's grandson, also Hugh, 51, told The Scotsman from his Edinburgh home this week: "It certainly wasn't my grandfather's best goal but it is the one he will forever be remembered for.

"There is a bit of a conspiracy theory around it. The Arsenal goalkeeper Lewis was Welsh, which put a bit of suspicion on him. He blamed the sheen on the brand new jersey he was wearing and ever since it has been a superstition at Arsenal to put the goalkeeper's jersey through the wash before every game. They still do it to this day."

Hugh came into possession of his grandfather's cup final jersey, winner's medal and match programme which he has kindly donated to the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden.

A keen Motherwell supporter, Hugh has retained close links with Cardiff City, who remain eternally proud of his grandfather's contribution to club folklore. Hugh said: "I travel a bit with my job as a salesman for a medical firm so whenever I'm in the area I'll give Cardiff a call and they look after me with a seat in the director's box.

"And when the Welsh are up for the rugby and you get talking to them in the pubs it's good for a few free drinks!

"Because of my grandfather I've got a real soft spot for Cardiff and will be cheering them on against Middlesbrough. Both the semi-finals are at Wembley so even if they could win this one it would be great and I'd definitely hope to get down for that. A Cardiff-Bristol Rovers semi-final would certainly be interesting."

Hugh revealed that his grandfather may have secured Cardiff's success long before his shot found the back of the Wembley net. "The team were staying at a hotel in Southport before a match in the earlier rounds against Bolton and a black cat crossed my grandfather's path on the golf course," he recounts. "They ended up taking it to Wembley with them as a lucky mascot. In the pictures of the reception at Cardiff town hall after the final you can see the players holding this cat."

In the afterglow of winning the FA Cup it may not have seemed likely but, unfortunately, Ferguson's luck was about to turn for the worse. Two seasons later a back injury limited his appearances, although he still managed 15 goals. He was signed by Dundee for 500 in 1929, a move which would end in the most distressing of circumstances. It is thought that Ferguson desperately wanted to return home to Motherwell but this did not materialise and he ended up at Dens, where the fans had great expectations of their illustrious new signing. Wife Jessie and his two children Tom (Hugh's father) and Sadie returned to Motherwell as Ferguson attempted to keep his career going in Dundee. Still troubled by his back, he was unable to recapture the form of his heyday and the Dens faithful grew restless.

After 17 appearances in the dark blue yielded just two goals he played his last match, a 3-0 home win over Hearts on 14 December 1929. Dropped from the side, Ferguson was last seen alive on the evening of 7 January 1930 after a training session at Dens Park. The following morning he was found by a squad of painters lying huddled over a gas ring in one of main stand's rooms, a cap drawn tightly over his head.

The myth which has grown up is that Ferguson was pushed into this drastic act by the persistent barracking from the stands, his loss of form and place in the team. Only Ferguson himself knew the reasons why he felt he could not go on but his grandson is keen to point out some other possible contributing factors. Hugh said: "My grandfather was suffering from an imbalance of his inner-ear by the time he came up to play for Dundee. There was something pressing down on his head and the family believed it was a brain tumour that was never diagnosed.

"The result was that he kept falling down on the park, which didn't go down well with the Dundee fans. There were was a bit of barracking as fans were wont to do in those days. He also suffered terribly from insomnia, so you can imagine how difficult things must have been for him." Even sadder was the fact Jessie Ferguson was pregnant at the time of her husband's death with their third child, Jack. It was also a cruel blow for Ferguson's mother, who had lost her husband in a colliery accident 17 years previously.

The story of the man whose goal took the FA Cup out of England for the first and only time is naturally overshadowed by his untimely death but this extract from a Welsh newspaper article of the time provides a more fitting reminder of the man. In a brutal era when goalkeepers were often barged over the line for goals, Ferguson's magnificent scoring record stands unblemished by any such underhandedness. The article states: "If a goal had to be collected at the expense of injuries to the goalkeeper then that goal was not collected by Hugh Ferguson, who was one of the most likeable and cleanest of players."

And, you could add, one of the finest of his time, which was all too brief.