November 1958. Then, as now, the world was in the midst of a sharp economic downturn. Direct-dial telephone calls in Britain were three weeks away and would be inaugurated with a call from the Queen to speak to the Lord Provost in Edinburgh. The No 1 hit single of the time was It’s All In The Game by Tommy Edwards.

For the gaggle of young Queen’s Park footballers on the platform at Glasgow Central Station on the morning of Saturday, November 15, the chatter was not all about the game. Rather than that afternoon’s encounter with Stranraer, they were discussing how to kill time during the long trek through Ayrshire to that far-flung, windswept corner of Dumfries and Galloway.

Some would play cards, while others, such as the exuberant Charlie Church, would chatter all the way to the southwest coast. And the newcomer in their midst, a 16-year-old centre forward by the name of Alex Ferguson, sat quietly, taking in the scene and contemplating his first steps into the world of senior football.

Life was getting interesting for the young Ferguson. Having left school, he had begun an apprenticeship as a toolmaker with Wickman, on the Hillington industrial estate. With a little money in his pocket, he was a Saturday night regular at one of the local dance halls. At Queen’s Park he had quickly progressed through the youth team, the Hampden XI, the Strollers and now into the first-team squad. This is a club who revel, to this day, in their amateur status, but, for this feisty teenager from Govan, the idea of playing “for the sake of playing” — as their motto, Ludere Causa Ludendi, decreed — did not resonate as it did to some of his more well-heeled team-mates. Funnily, it never has.

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By the time he returned to Glasgow that evening, Ferguson had scored his first league goal — ending “a great solo run with a flashing drive”, according to the Scottish Sunday Express — but it had not been an enjoyable afternoon. As if the long journey home was not bad enough after a 2-1 defeat, he had complained at having been bitten by an opponent by the name of McKnight as they tussled on the ground. Unimpressed by the debutant’s whinge, Jackie Gardiner, the official in charge of the team, urged Ferguson to “bite him back”. So much for Queen’s Park’s proud reputation as the Corinthians of Scottish football.

The goal apart, it was an inauspicious start and, although Ferguson would score again in a 4-2 victory over Alloa Athletic a week later, there was no sense among his team-mates that they were in the company of greatness. “He trained all right,” Bill Pinkerton, the team’s goalkeeper of the time, said this week. “But I remember thinking sometimes that his heart wasn’t in it. He had a few run-ins with the coaching staff, Willie Gibson and Frank Lyon. Possibly it was to do with the training methods, which in those days involved four laps of the old cinder track and ten sprints. I don’t think he trained all that hard, but he was a decent player. He was difficult to knock off the ball because he was all elbows and hands.

“I would say Alex got a bit of a shock at Stranraer. I don’t recall much about the match itself, but afterwards we had to dash out of the back door at Stair Park and run across the railway line to get the coach train back to Glasgow. It wasn’t glamorous, but that was his first experience of senior football.”

Ferguson spent two seasons playing for a struggling Queen’s Park team before the lure of the professional game took him to St Johnstone and, more fruitfully, to Dunfermline Athletic, Rangers, Falkirk and Ayr United. As proudly as he talks up an impressive goalscoring rate and his appearances for various representative teams and in unofficial matches for Scotland during a bizarre world tour in 1967, full international recognition eluded him.

It was a far more notable playing career than those of certain other successful managers — Arsène Wenger, Rafael Benítez and José Mourinho, for example — but, in a golden age for Scottish football, he faded into semi-obscurity.

“After he left Queen’s Park, to me he was just another Scottish footballer,” Pinkerton said. “There was nothing outstanding about his record. I don’t think he had any real highlights, even at Rangers. It was only when he became a manager that he came back into prominence. He has done exceptionally well as a manager. I don’t remember having the impression at Queen’s Park that he had any particular aspirations in the management side, but he was only starting out then. Others have said that they could see a manager in him even then, but it was hard to see it at that age.”

Every journey, though, begins with a first step. For Ferguson, the journey that began in the Stair Park mud that November afternoon has brought, as manager of Aberdeen and Manchester United, bewildering achievement.

Of the thousands of sporting careers launched every week, few leave more than the slightest imprint. Greatness is attained by a precious handful, immortality by the tiniest elite. Little did the Queen’s Park players on the platform at Central Station that Saturday morning realise that a fresh-faced teenager named Ferguson was an immortal in the making.