There’s an exciting kid at Rangers who can be every bit as good as me so long as he’s just as impatient – Barry Ferguson

Hands up, I’ve never really been the patient type.

As a matter of fact, I turned 47 at the weekend and I’m still waiting to discover what the word even means. I just wish it would hurry up. So you can probably imagine what I was like as a kid at Ibrox, wondering when I would finally be given the chance to force my way into the first team and become a regular Rangers player.

Walter Smith had given me a taste of it. I had played a handful of games under the great man and, looking back, I should probably have been delighted about that given the guys he had in a squad that was pushing for Ten in a Row. But it wasn’t enough. I remember thinking to myself I wasn’t going to be satisfied with turning round to some guy in a pub in my thirties and saying, ‘You know what mate, I played 12 times for Rangers once upon a time’. No. I wasn’t going to settle for pulling on the shirt every now and then. I wanted to make it my own.

I’ll never forget pulling up a ball and sitting on it, at the side of the training pitch, when we got the chance to watch guys like Ally McCoist, Richard Gough, Jorg Albertz, Stuart McCall, Ian Ferguson and Ian Durrant being put through their paces. I’ll be honest, I was in awe of these guys.

The rest of the young boys would be looking on too but I wasn’t interested in speaking to anyone. I just sat there. On my ball. Watching and studying everything they did. And all the while I’d be thinking to myself, ‘Wow! Just look at the way these guys go about it. That’s what it’s going to take if you want to be out there with them one day’.

But, like I say, I was never blessed with patience. So when I was out there training with them and getting the odd game here and there, I’d be straight in the ear of my youth team