Vincent Hogan and John Fogarty joined Richie McCormack for Off the Ball's Sunday Paper Review this week.
Alex Ferguson's sudden turn for the worse yesterday dominated the back pages and we here at Off the Ball wish him a full and speedy recovery.
Hogan recalled an incident with Ferguson in the early 1990s where he aggravated the Man United manager only to receive a personal apology later.
"It's shocking to think just a few days ago he was presenting a vase to Arsene Wenger to mark Arsene Wenger's last trip to Old Trafford," he told Richie.
"This larger than life character - I think he won 38 trophies as United boss and I had a couple of experiences of both sides of Ferguson. I was covering a Champions League game against Barcelona and at the time I think we had a World Cup qualifier against Northern Ireland coming up and Roy Keane was carrying some kind of an injury and Keane had already been ruled out for this qualifier because he was to have an operation.
"And, I was at the press conference the day before they played Barcelona in which Ferguson happened to say they now didn't think Keane needed the operation.
"So I put up my hand and eventually got my question and asked: "Does that mean he could be available for Ireland's World Cup qualifier?" - and he erupted!
"And he effed and blinded and he said "Here I am, 24 hours out from a Barcelona match and you're asking me about effing Ireland?"
"And I could see all the senior English journalists and they were sniggering and they thought this was so entertaining that this gobshite from Ireland had blundered into this but a very interesting thing happened at the end. He left the press conference room and then doubled-back and came to me and actually apologised to me for reacting the way had but he was so wound up about it being Barcelona and that was his only focus.
"And I remember Henry Winter, who was working for the Telegraph at the time, and he said he'd never, ever seen Ferguson do that. So, there was that side to him that he had a conscience and he didn't like the way some of the senior writers had been sniggering at the way he treated me."
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