Gerry Ferrara

This book takes the reader on the journey with a fanatical Ayr United supporter, detailing his fascination with football from the day of his birth right up to the conclusion of the 2011/12 Scottish football season. The story offers something different from the usual football yarns, as it provides an insight into the thoughts of a provincial club supporter from four different perspectives. "One Honest Man, Four Different Perspectives" takes the reader on the journey with a fanatical Ayr United supporter, detailing his fascination with football from the day of his birth right up to the conclusion of the 2011/12 Scottish football season. The story encapsulates the full range of emotions of a young boy and his football obsession, his dream to become a top player and the roller-coaster of emotions he experiences through his life as a supporter, a coach and a referee. He becomes hooked on Ayr United in 1967, as a twelve -year-old on his first visit to a league match at the hallowed ground that is Somerset Park, Ayr, and embarks on a dramatic and emotional 45 year journey that comes to a climax as the now fifty seven-year-old in 2012, surrounded by his family, friends and tribal colleagues at Hampden Park in Glasgow, the national stadium, witnesses the latest attempt at glory and a new chapter in the history of the Honest Men. The story offers something different from the usual football yarns, biographies and statistical accounts. It provides an insight into the thoughts of a provincial club supporter from four different perspectives, with his passion for football and the contrast of bitter disappointment and laugh out loud humour evident throughout in the numerous anecdotes taken from each of the different angles of a diehard follower of Ayr United, a football player in school, youth, amateur and pub football, a coach, manager and chairman in grass roots football and as a qualified referee in amateur and youth football. Gerry Ferrara is one of seven siblings from an Italian family who settled in Ayr after the second world war. He grew up on the Craigie Estate, in the family home that sat at the five furlong gate of Ayr Racecourse. He was educated at St. Catherine's Primary and Queen Margaret Academy in Ayr and is a Careers Guidance Postgraduate from the University of Paisley. Gerry is married to Marilyn and they have three children. They still reside in Ayr, the town of his birth, where he works as a Learning Development Advisor at Ayr College. Gerry has had an obsession with football in general and Ayr United in particular that has lasted for 45 years.....and counting. He has developed his passion for his favourite sport from his four perspectives. As a player with Alloway Boys Club and Kyle Thistle Amateurs, a coach with Valspar Youth Football Club, an Ayrshire Association SFA referee and a fan of the Honest Men.