Tortured soul Ricksen created bond with fans that transcends game

"I had a special bond with Fernando, but I had to work hard at it in certain moments," said Alex McLeish, his former manager, this week. "In my time with him at Rangers sometimes things weren't so easy for him off the pitch. He would get upset, he was depressed at times. It wasn't just about Rangers, there was a human element to my relationship with him."

McLeish wasn't long in the Ibrox door as Dick Advocaat's replacement in 2001 before he realised he had a colourful and zany character in Ricksen. But there was much more to the defender than that. There was a semi-tragic side to Ricksen's life, which we never fully gauged at the time, but which now seems perfectly clear.

Depression was always hovering around him. So were addictions, alcohol being one. By the time Ricksen was halfway through his stay with Rangers between 2000 and 2006 his private life was a shambles, with a long-suffering wife, Graciela L'Ami, ever wary of his excesses and disappearing acts. Side by side with all of this, Ricksen came over as funny, kindly, and with a good human spirit about him.

"I never wanted to delve too much into Fernando's private life, but you'd hear these stories about him," said McLeish. "I quite often wanted to ask him, 'look, are things okay, are you all right?' He was one of those guys, I think, that was never happier than when on the pitch.

"I'd get the middle of the night phonecalls from him. I'd try to talk to him or calm him down. I tried my level best to be as good a father-figure to him as I could. And when trouble brewed, then yes, sometimes I also had to make sure he didn't cross that line in terms of the values of the club."

One special memory - now seemingly an inconsequential one - I have of Ricksen is from Pittodrie during those McLeish years. Rangers and Aberdeen had just locked horns, but the match had been marred by missiles thrown by supporters, some of them aimed at Rangers players, including Ricksen.

As journalists, our job was to make a minor fuss about this, and in stepped Ricksen after the game to talk to us. I was struck by how calm, level-headed and lacking in bitterness he was about it all, when he might easily have ratcheted it all up. "Please, just don't do it," Ricksen said to supporters in light of the missile incidents. "You're spoiling it for everyone, you're spoiling the football. Just come and enjoy the game, what's the problem?"

The tragedy was that, in his own life away from football, Ricksen wasn't much use at applying his own "just don't do it" advice. In Scotland the tabloids quickly realised they had headline-making fodder on their hands in him, and before long, to McLeish's agitation, a slew of stories began to appear about his defender's chaotic existence. McLeish was surely right - Ricksen was at his happiest when within the relative safety of the football park - though even then things could spiral.

"Dealing with him taught me a lot about man-management, in terms of what to do and how to react in certain situations," said McLeish. "Sometimes unruly players can have too much free time on their hands, and when things go wrong the fireworks start going off - no pun intended - and you have to deal with it, and deal with the player. In Fernando's case, quite often that meant putting an arm around the shoulder.

"He often took his troubles onto the pitch, too. At one stage I faced quite a job trying to minimise his yellow and red cards. I made him captain, which I think helped a bit. And he was a very likeable character in the dressing-room - unless you were on the receiving end of one of his tackles in training."

In this context I reminded McLeish of another strange Ricksen episode - long forgotten now - which occurred in Glasgow on the evening of August 23 2006. After getting more than drunk on a plane en route to pre-season in South Africa, Ricksen had been sent packing straight back home by the new Rangers manager, Paul Le Guen, and was then shipped off to Russia on-loan for the season to Dick Advocaat's Zenit St Petersburg.

As a complicated part of the arrangement, here that August night were Advocaat and Ricksen back in Glasgow with Zenit, for a so-called "friendly" against Rangers. The Ibrox crowd lauded Ricksen, until he started laying about quite a few of his ex-team-mates, before finally lunging crudely at Chris Burke, putting the young Rangers winger out of the game for seven weeks.

When Advocaat, having seen enough, finally hauled Ricksen off after 73 minutes, the player then had the temerity to raise his hands aloft and applaud the Ibrox crowd, which had spent the previous 30 minutes turning on him for his antics. And that Ibrox audience, in turn, actually applauded Ricksen back.

The truth was, the Rangers supporters loved Ricksen for what he was - and they realised that again that strange night, even when his antics this time were being aimed at those wearing a blue shirt.

"That was Fernando," said McLeish. "He had that aggression in his game - which sometimes needed taming - and the fans liked that in him. He trained like he played, which some players do, though it is not always the best plan.

"Funnily enough, I remember when wee Chrissy Burke was promoted to the Rangers first-team squad all those years ago, one of the first things that happened to him in training was a Fernando tackle. I don't think wee Burkey knew what had hit him. I said to him, 'Chris, you're with the big boys now, you'll need to move your feet a bit quicker.' But that was Fernando for you."

Back then we categorised all of this and more as "colourful" or even "wacky". Ricksen, the lone wolf, made many smile, and could be detested by opposition supporters. Now, though, in his pain, he surely unites every decent-minded football supporter in our country.

Motor neurone disease is barely worth thinking about - especially in what it inflicts upon its victims in their final weeks. Ricksen is now a shell of his former self but his courage and willingness to expose his wastedness to the world are something to behold.

Rangers fans, in turn, are about to show Fernando how much they love him. In spite of everything, they always did.