In front of 1,300 Scotsmen and women Sir Alex Ferguson picked a Corkman as his standout player of his 35 years in top flight management. And, no, it wasn't that Corkman.
At a speaking engagement in Aberdeen's Music Hall to promote his biography, his interviewer Dougie Donnelly asked Ferguson to name his top eleven and his single, outstanding player. Ferguson held up his hands as if to say, "impossible".
Great strikers
He went through a list of great strikers, including Cantona, Van Nistelrooy, Yorke, Van Persie, and Rooney.
For midfielders he first named four, Robson, Scholes, Keane and Ince – in that order. But defender Denis Irwin was his top man. "Incomparable," was the word he used. "The only player who would definitely, without doubt, get in any united team was Denis Irwin," he said.
“Denis Irwin?” said Donnelly, surprised. “Absolutely,” responded Ferguson. “In the position he played, incomparable, incomparable.” Now there’s a tribute.
Fans paid £40 to hear Ferguson reminiscing for 75 minutes about his career – a price tag that included a signed copy of his autobiography. There was a big focus, naturally, last night on his eight years at Aberdeen but the subject matter will shift when he speaks to 2,500 people in the Convention Centre Dublin on Friday night.
There wasn’t any talk last night of rows and score-settling and player-control. If he was still fighting with Keane it wasn’t an issue in Aberdeen where in the 1980s he brought them four Scottish FA cups, three league titles and two European titles.
He recalled how in his Aberdeen days when he was competing with other clubs to recruit young talent, the trick was to charm the mothers, slip the player’s siblings a “10-bob note” and give the fathers cigarettes. But primarily said Sir Alex, “Get the mothers”.
Earlier he participated in the draw for the fourth round of the Scottish cup where there was both amusement and bemusement among the Scottish football journalists and senior officials at the Irish media's fixation on the Keane/Ferguson spat.
'Fallouts'
"He has had fallouts with many people," said Alan McRae, vice-president of the Scottish FA and a friend of Ferguson's. "You fall out and you fall in, don't you? Without a doubt they'll fall in again."
Michael Grant, chief football writer for the Herald and Times group in Scotland and an avid Aberdeen supporter, said his readers "would enjoy the theatre" of the Keane-Ferguson row while fully realising that "Keane and Fergie are exactly the same kind of guy, two peas from the same pod . . . They are both extraordinary characters and it is a pity their relationship has deteriorated".
