In many respects the 1982 Scottish Cup final looked like a replay of 1978.

Aberdeen were back at Hampden to face Rangers. Willie Miller, Stuart Kennedy and John McMaster were in the team, just as they had been four years before. Lining up against them were Sandy Jardine, Colin Jackson, Davie Cooper, Bobby Russell and Tommy McLean, all of whom had been in that winning Rangers side. John Greig, captain in 1978, was now manager. This was a squad of proven winners. And on the terracing their support again vastly outnumbered Aberdeen's.

Many knew that Aberdeen had managed only three wins in the previous 18 Scottish Cup meetings between the clubs. This time Aberdeen were heavily fancied, but that had been the case in 1978 when they froze. "I don't care how many make the journey from Aberdeen," said Rangers captain Ally Dawson on the eve of the final. "Our fans will outnumber and outshout them. That will give us a tremendous lift and maybe even unsettle them a bit."

The remark was revealing. Few doubted Aberdeen's ability, only their character. They had beaten Rangers and Celtic 21 times since Alex Ferguson took over and nine of those wins had been in Glasgow. But he had yet to take them to Hampden and triumph when it mattered most, in a cup final.

In his Sunday Mail preview of the final Don Morrison wrote of Aberdeen: "The in-form team, talented and skilful, they look stronger in practically every respect. Yet there is one question which niggles away at the back of the mind: do they really have the temperament?"

Dawson's line about Rangers' support unsettling Aberdeen was understandable. A Rangers crowd in Glasgow is a force of nature, matched in scale, volume and fanaticism only by neighbours Celtic. For decades Rangers had seen club after club crumble and fold when faced with this assault on the senses, Aberdeen among them.

Greig and his team prepared for the final in the seaside resort of Largs, an hour out of Glasgow. The intention was to release the players from the pressure of the city and allow them to relax. But it also gave them thinking time. Time for doubt. No matter how hard they tried to convince themselves that Ferguson and this Aberdeen team would buckle, the evidence was in short supply. They knew something had changed at Pittodrie.

No longer did Aberdeen travel south to Glasgow cowed and with an inferiority complex. That had become clear from something that had started to happen when they visited Celtic. Parkhead could hold close to 70,000 and often did. It was dark, huge and menacing. But no part of the neglected, misshapen stadium was more intimidating than the Jungle. The fans who packed it for the big games were the Celtic hard core. They were noisy, aggressive if they wanted to be, and unforgiving to any team they saw as a threat. Doug Rougvie was Ferguson's first-choice left-back, an enormous, straight-backed, broad-chested Fife giant. Because he was from Ballingry, was missing his front teeth and would stand with his long arms and legs spread wide when protesting to referees, team-mates nicknamed him the Ballingry Bat.

Yet, although he looked fearsome Rougvie had a gentle, easy-going nature and possessed the serenity common to many big men who have no need to fear physical confrontation. He was provocative in just one respect, one that became a symbol of Ferguson's Aberdeen's mentality and swagger. Instead of staying well infield during pre-match warm-ups at Parkhead, Rougvie would remove himself from the other players and start doing his exercises right in front of the baying Jungle. There he would be, running up and down the trackside, stretching his arms out wide, doing side-to-side moves or leaping to head imaginary balls. It was an act of mischief and an unequivocal declaration that however much they tried to intimidate him, he did not care. No one had ever shown such nerve to a Glasgow crowd.

The Celtic fans went wild, screaming at him, hurling abuse, jabbing their fingers. Rougvie looked back with a huge beaming grin: "I used to run past the Jungle pumping my arm at them. 'Up ye, ya bastards'. Terrible, wasn't it? I just did it to noise them up. It was us saying, 'We've come down to beat youse and we're not bothering our arse how we do it'. Oh, I got pelters. Absolute dog's abuse! It was brilliant! I'd be going, 'Oh, I've never heard that one, I'll take a note of it'. Ach, I'm a big coward really. I'd have run if anyone had come on. I knew they wouldn't catch me because I was quick as f***!"

Everyone who saw it knew exactly what it was, including the Celtic players. Davie Provan said: "It was like a statement: 'You're not going to intimidate us'." Rougvie initially took on the Jungle on the first of the two visits to Parkhead in April 1980. It was his own idea rather than a stunt suggested to him by Ferguson, but it sent out exactly the kind of message the manager wanted. Miller said: "Let's just say Fergie didn't discourage it." Rougvie's antics subsequently became a theatrical ritual of Aberdeen's visits to Parkhead.

Ferguson encouraged his younger players and new signings to take in the show. Tommy McIntyre remembered: "He said, 'Go and watch The Bat doing his warm-up'. It was a right hot sunny day, he takes his top off, and he's ripped. They're howling at him! He was just winding them up. And Fergie wanted them wound up."

Miller said: "I loved it. I'd say, 'Big man, on you go; we'll just quietly do our warm-up over here while you take all the flak'. He loved it. It seemed to energise him. He enjoyed being that kind of figure."

Ferguson wanted to reverse the status quo in which visiting teams could seem submissive or meek against the Old Firm. He wanted his teams to be harder than Celtic and Rangers, better than them, mentally stronger than them. And he wanted to make sure the Old Firm knew it. No team had taken such a provocative approach, but Ferguson had players with the skill and attitude to carry it off. Alex McLeish said: "When we played Celtic, if we dumped Frank McGarvey on the ground we used to rub him on the head and say, 'Ach, you're all right, Frank, get up'. He hated it."

When he was wary of one of the opposition's key men, like the rugged Celtic captain Roy Aitken, Ferguson would instruct one of his team to confront him from the start. Dougie Bell remembered: "He'd say, 'Roy Aitken? Roy Aitken? The Celtic fans all sing, Feed the Bear about him … he's a big shitebag. He's scared of you, Dougie'.

"Whatever Fergie told you, you believed. So the first chance I got I tried to get in about Roy Aitken and wind him up. Roy probably wasn't at all bothered about me, but Fergie had me believing he was running scared."

The Old Firm did not take it well. Animosity and bad blood developed. After three seasons and a league title, Aberdeen had become hate figures for Rangers and Celtic supporters. Tellingly, this also extended to the dressing room.

Davie Provan said: "Even after an Old Firm game there is a mutual respect between the two sets of players. Most of them shake hands. That didn't always happen against Aberdeen. We didn't like them and they didn't like us."

At the end of one season Aberdeen and Celtic were both booked into the same resort in Majorca. This only became evident when the Celtic players walked into a pub and found several of the Aberdeen team there. Provan said: "You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

"Normally you'd meet another Scottish team and it would be, 'How you doing, how long you over for?'. Not this time. It was a very curt 'aye' and that was it. That was the feeling between the teams."

Both halves of the Old Firm were of a similar mind. Aberdeen got right under Rangers' skin, too. "It wasn't a nice ­experience playing against Aberdeen," said defender Davie McKinnon.

"That was part of their strength. They wound people up something awful on the pitch. Rangers players and Aberdeen players just didn't get on at all. There was a huge amount of needle.

"I think there was respect from both teams for the abilities of the players, but when you played against them there wasn't a respect for the way they went about their business because they were in your face quite a lot. That's a strength, I suppose. You don't need to be liked to be a winner. And they had that winning mentality."

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1982 Scottish Cup Final, Aberdeen 4 Rangers1

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The significance of the win was impossible to miss. At 4-1 Aberdeen had not just beaten one of the Old Firm in a cup final, they had embarrassed them. Two years had passed since they had won the league, but Ferguson now had his crucial second trophy. ­"Rangers bow the north", said the Glasgow Herald. In the Daily Record, Alex Cameron wrote that Aberdeen had "annihilated" Rangers. "Extra time was like a wake for Rangers fans. They had gone ominously quiet, as if they knew what was coming."

John Greig praised those supporters for their loyalty but in truth many left long before the end. They recognised Aberdeen's supremacy, albeit reluctantly, but plenty had no desire to linger and witness it.

Greig was magnanimous: "[In] the previous two years we have won the cup and I'd like to think we can behave in defeat as we did in victory. I don't want to take any credit from Aberdeen: they are a very good side and worthy winners."

Winning a cup final in Glasgow was a hurdle Aberdeen had to clear. The way they did it was enormously significant. Hammering Rangers at Hampden was extraordinary. It meant the league title in 1980 could not be written off as some sort of freakish one-off.

McLeish said: "That was the game. I know winning the league was something to behold after 25 years, but I think some people still looked on it as a flash in the pan. Folk might have said, 'They went 25 years without the league and now it's gonna be another 25'. Winning that Scottish Cup so soon after the championship really gave us confidence."

In the two seasons since winning the league Ferguson had challenged his players, the young ones and the seniors, telling them to their faces they might be "a one-trophy team". McMaster said: "He was always saying, 'Are youse happy with this, are youse in a wee comfort zone? Do you want to be watching Coronation Street on a Wednesday night instead of playing European football?'"

None of them realised what was about to unfold. They were heading into a campaign that would leave no time for Ena Sharples,Ken Barlow and Bet Lynch in the Rovers Return.

They were about to launch a massive assault on Europe.

Fergie Rises: How Britain's greatest football manager was made at Aberdeen, by Michael Grant and published by Aurum Press