It’s a fair cop as Hibs star planning for future
With Poppy Lawson playing mum and a cleaner coming in to tidy up regularly, the house share arrangement involving five Hibs Women first-teamers hardly sounds like a remake of some raucous comedy. Animal House, it isn’t.
Which is probably just as well, for Abbie Ferguson. Not only because loud music might induce a few painful flashbacks for a player just recovered from concussion. But because it wouldn’t look great for a future officer of the law to be the subject of police complaints about noisy parties.
The young winger, a summer signing from Celtic, is considering studying criminology as a way of preparing for a life after football that, all going well, would see her swap the green-and-white of Hibs for a Police Scotland uniform.
“I want to get into studying,” said Ferguson. “But I need to pick a subject. Honestly, I have so much free time. I will get up in the morning and have almost nothing to do until training.
“So in the summer I’ll look at university. I’ve looked into criminology. Me and Poppy were talking about doing the course together, so we can study together. I think I want to be in the police after football. So I thought I may as well fill my time doing something that can help me in the future.”
Ferguson, who spent last season on loan at Partick Thistle, admits she’s still adapting to her summer move to Hibs, revealing: “It’s my first time moving out of home. I’m only from Perth, so it’s not like I’ve moved too far away, just an hour or so.
“I’m living with a few team-mates, which is nice. I’m staying with Mya (Christie), Tegan (Bowie), Comfort (Erhabor) and Poppy Lawson. We have a place in Leith. We can literally see the stadium.
And obviously it’s handy for Meadowbank.
“Poppy is the mum! To be fair, we have a cleaner … a lot of the girls make fun of us about that. But the girls are good, not a lot of parties!”
Ferguson came on as a substitute in yesterday’s 2-0 victory over her old Partick pals at Meadowbank, having suffered a concussion in last month’s 3-1 home loss to Celtic. With the subject back in the news, thanks to Martin Boyle’s sickening head knock last weekend, her tale of a slow and often painful recovery makes for interesting reading.
Explaining the onestep-forward, two-steps-back progress she endured after suffering a seemingly trivial head knock, she said: “I wasn’t knocked out or anything. But I’ve had quite a few setbacks since I started.
“I had really sore eyes, that was the biggest one. I couldn’t really look at light. Noise, as well. And headaches. But I wasn’t sick, it was just my eyes whenever I watched TV or looked at my phone. So I had to stay off my phone …
“When those symptoms settled, I went back to running and it felt a lot better. So I’ve been in training this week, did Wednesday non-contact which was fine. Well, I say fine … it was tough after so long out! On Friday I was back in full contact training. So I was pleased with that.”