Newcastle’s physio Paul Ferris on sticking his finger in Alan Shearer’s groin, bust-ups and Paul Gascoigne
Former Newcastle star shares his experiences of ten Toon managers over three decades as a player and physio
IT was July 1996 and Newcastle had travelled to the Far East for a pre-season tour.
Toon’s assistant physio Paul Ferris was the only senior staff member who had been left behind when he got a call from chief executive Russell Cushing, summoning him to a private hospital in Manchester.
Ferris recalled: “I opened the door and there was the world’s most expensive footballer, just sitting in his boxer shorts.
“The first thing I had to do was stick my finger in his groin!”
The player in question was, of course, Alan Shearer and Ferris was conducting his medical ahead of his world-record £15million move from Blackburn to Newcastle.
It was the start of a friendship which has lasted until this day, with Shearer writing the forward to Ferris’ autobiography, The Boy on the Shed.
The book chronicles the quite extraordinary life of the Northern Irishman, who became Newcastle’s youngest-ever player when he made his debut in 1982 at the age of 16 years and 294 days.
Injury forced him to retire after making only 14 appearances for the Toon but he returned to the club as a physio in 1993.
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After 13 years working at St James' Park, he quit in August 2006 to embark on a new - and rather different - career as a barrister.
Yet as soon as he had completed his qualifications, he was lured back into football by his mate Shearer.
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As Ferris reveals, the Toon legend had been offered the Southampton manager’s job in 2008 by a group buying the Saints and he wanted him to head up his medical department.
Speaking to SunSport in a hotel on Newcastle's Quayside, Ferris said: “We met three businessmen in Alan’s living room.
“They were buying the club and said they were nearly there.”
The proposed takeover, however, fell through leaving Ferris jobless and Shearer still searching for his first managerial post.
That, of course, soon came with Newcastle in April 2009, when Mike Ashley called on Shearer to try and keep the crisis club up.
PAUL FERRIS' LOWDOWN ON...
JOEY BARTON
“He was a deeply unstable man and a worryingly deluded one. A ticking time bomb.
“Anyone who crossed his path was in danger of being beaten to a pulp as his hands tried to mask the insecurities and demons that ran riot in his head.”
TINO ASPRILLA
“He was a very likeable man, always smiling but always late.
“One day we walked into the treatment room and Tino was sitting on the treatment bed.
“I remember we asked him what he was doing there, he said, ‘Well, it’s time for training’. I said, ‘No, the clocks changed last night’.
“So the only time he was there early was when the clocks changed and he didn’t know!”
NOBBY SOLANO
“You could pick your phone up and somebody would play the trumpet down the phone – and then the phone would get put down. Nobody would speak.
“Even when the manager was trying to have a team meeting in the changing room, you might hear the trumpet.”
PAUL GASCOIGNE
“We had a trip to Bermuda in January 1985.
“It was a beautiful hotel. There were people in the pool and people lying either side of the pool.
“Gazza had his full Newcastle tracksuit on and he just climbed onto the top diving board, walked off the end and just dropped into the water.
“He didn’t look at anyone or tell anyone he was doing it. He was just excited to be there.”
KEVIN KEEGAN
“He was incredibly charismatic. He lit up the room with his enthusiasm and passion.
“He grabbed a group of players and just dragged them with him.”
SIR BOBBY ROBSON
“He was the best man-manager you will ever meet. He had the respect of everyone.
“Bobby almost overnight transformed the emotions of the football club.”
Ferris gives a fascinating insight into the dressing room during that eight-game period, including a huge bust-up between Shearer and Joey Barton after the midfielder was sent off at Liverpool.
He also reveals his disappointment at how star striker Michael Owen did not play in the penultimate match of Newcastle’s relegation fight against Fulham after feeling his groin in training.
Ferris explained: “Michael didn’t want to risk it because he was out of contract in the summer and was saying, ‘I’ll not get a contract at another club if I’m injured'.
“We had a bit of a conversation where I suggested he should be concentrating on the game coming up.
“All we could think about was Fulham, whereas he was thinking about the future.”
Ferris also reveals for the first time what really happened with Shearer after Newcastle went down.
He details a training-ground meeting when Ashley arrived with financier Keith Harris to inform them he was selling up, but Shearer still insisted he wanted to be boss and shook hands with the owner.
Yet two days later, managing director Derek Llambias – who Ferris reveals Shearer asked Ashley to replace – told them there had ‘been a problem with Barclays bank’.
And Ferris added: “That was the last time Alan was ever contacted directly by Newcastle.”
After weeks of speculation over Shearer’s future, Chris Hughton was eventually appointed to lead Newcastle back to the Premier League.
And Ashley’s U-turn had just as big an impact on Ferris’ life as it did Shearer’s.
He sums it up in his book, when he wrote: “I would have bet my house Alan would end up as a great manager.
"I eventually did. I had no choice but to put what was left of our home up for sale.”
And Ferris told SunSport: “It was devastating for me personally because it set me off on a tailspin.
“I didn’t quite know how my career was going to because I’d sacrificed quite a bit.”
He eventually got a job as the managing director of a fitness company in Newcastle – the city he first moved to from Northern Ireland in 1981 after being successful at a Toon trial alongside a certain Paul Gascoigne.
Ferris was tipped for the top, his proudest moment coming when he scored in a 3-1 home win over Bradford in the League Cup.
Yet he was plagued by hamstring troubles before a knee injury – first sustained by attempting a bicycle kick in training – ultimately cut short his once-promising career and he retired aged only 25.
Ferris said: “There was a moment when my football career finished, I had no home, my mum had died and it was a dark period.
“I was obviously hurt because I feel like I drifted out of the backdoor of something that should have been really good for me.
“You are 16, playing in the first team at Newcastle, you score a goal at St James’ Park and it’s a feeling like nothing you’ve ever experienced in your life before. You want to do it again and again.
“So for that to just fizzle out, it’s very disappointing, but it’s definitely not a hard luck story because, in some ways, I lived a very small dream that not many people get to live.”
Just like injuries wrecked his career, sadly, health problems have ravaged Ferris’ later life.
His book begins by detailing the day he had a heart attack and former Newcastle and England midfielder Rob Lee, who he had been working with, called the ambulance which saved him.
Ferris said: “I was very lucky to survive. I had a 99 per cent blockage in my main coronary artery, which is a potential disaster.”
Now he has another fight on his hands, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2016, just after he finished writing his autobiography.
Ferris has recently completed a six-week course of radiotherapy and is determined to win his latest battle.
He added: “The negative is that I’ve had a heart attack and I’ve now got cancer.
“But the positive is the heat attack didn’t kill me and the cancer, at the moment, is not a cancer that is going to kill me and I can fight that, too.
“If you have that mindset, you can have a good go at fighting anything.”
The Boy on the Shed by Paul Ferris is published by Hodder & Stoughton on February 22.