H a bang at Tynecastle

there is ample fuel left in the tank before he is forced to face up to that life after football.

As one of the more thoughtful characters in the Scottish game, he has given some consideration to what that may look like.

“It will be tough because I have not known anything else but, with the mindset I have got, I would imagine that I would stay in the game,” he continued. “The two things that excite me the most are tactics and man-management. I find that intriguing.

“When I was a young boy I’d be out first thing and I’d be putting the goals up or whatever, and I see one of my mates getting the late train and coming in late and missing all those jobs. I’d be raging.

“But as I got into the first team – and I probably learned this from Walter Smith the most – I realised you need to treat every player differently.

“It’s all of that kind of stuff is what excites me the most.” impressive. He knew every kid in the dressing room’s names. He knew their mums and their grannies’ names too. Because he targeted them.

“He’s got a family tree in the sports industry which is still growing. He was always looking after you, and he got that loyalty in return.”

McMaster’s own story began when he was signed in 1972 from Port Glasgow Rovers and been part of Aberdeen’s plans under Jimmy Bonthrone and Ally McLeod but it wasn’t until Billy McNeill arrived at the club that he truly felt at home. When McNeill left for the manager’s job at Celtic, it was the start of Fergie time.

“Fergie inherited the team and when he came in he started talking about St Mirren, how good the likes of Frank McGarvey and Billy Stark were,” said McMaster. “But our lads had beaten St Mirren in pretty much every game we had played for six years. So I said to him ‘you are going to have to stop talking about St Mirren because you are going to lose the dressing room’ and he took it on board. It wasn’t like he just dismissed you. He knew he had experienced players there. And all of sudden it just changed.

“Whether it was a game of table tennis, snooker, head tennis or whatever, you couldn’t get beaten because you got slaughtered,” says McMaster. “He introduced a game called ‘tips’ which we used to play it in Greenock, up at Gibshill. It was one touch, defending a goal, with a kerb for your goal. Fergie and Archie Knox used to go into the gym of an afternoon at 2pm and come out at 4pm, just because they wanted to beat each other so much. We would do it with four goals, two on each side, you would have three lives and you were out, it was great for your awareness and trusting your team-mates.”

“There is the odd funny story but that is not what we are about,” says Martin, “that is just to help deliver the message. We are typically talking to 30-year-old students, who pay for their own tuition, they have maybe stepped out for a year, so these are highly motivated individuals keen to get up that ladder. When we were talking to John, it was clear to us that the way Sir Alex Ferguson worked, there was a structure to it - whether he had actually sat down and developed that or not.”