'Forget the red cards, the scrapes and the prison sentence, I'm not the big hard case people think I am'

BIG DUNC ON HIS 'TERRIFYING' EXPERIENCE IN A GLASWEGIAN JAIL, HOSPITALISING INTRUDERS & PARTYING TOO HARD AFTER HE QUIT PLAYING

- By ANDY DUNN

NFAMOUSLY, Duncan Ferguson once beat a burglar so badly, his wife was worried he had killed the intruder.

During his playing career in England, he collected EIGHT red cards, a record for a Premier League player.

Three times as a youngster, he was convicted for assault, twice after fights at taxi ranks and once after a scrap with a fisherman in the picturesque coastal village of Anstruther, in Fife.

A fourth assault charge for headbutting Raith Rovers defender John McStay while he was playing for Rangers ended with Ferguson serving a jail sentence in Barlinnie, one of Britain's most notorious jails, known locally in Glasgow as The Big Hoose, or Bar-L.

But almost 30 years on from that stretch in The Big Hoose, Big Dunc has mellowed out. A lot.

And anyhow, he reckons his reputation has not always been that fair, even though it seemed, for many years, he did not exactly try and shake it off.

"I'm not that big hard case that everyone makes me out to be," he laughs when we meet in Liverpool, a city he has long adopted as home.

"But I've got the record. I've got the red cards, they are there. I've got others things that happened to me off the field, they are there.

You cannot get away from that. But I'm not that man.

"I got myself into some scrapes when I was younger but who's not had a fat lip when they were younger?