Blake Ferguson cannot help but burst into laughter when asked if he thought his career would play out this way. The former Kangaroos winger’s rugby league journey has taken a unique and sometimes controversial trajectory but even by those standards, as he adjusts to life as a player in England’s second division – where the majority of the clubs are part-time and some crowds barely reach 1,000 – it is perhaps unsurprising when Ferguson affords himself a moment to reflect on how he has reached this point.
“I wouldn’t have thought I’d be here, that’s for sure,” Ferguson admits. After all, it was only this time last year Ferguson was a regular in a Parramatta Eels side that reached the NRL finals, but a lot has happened since then. That includes an ill-fated stint in Japanese rugby union club NEC Green Rockets, which ended with the 32-year-old spending a month in jail in Japan after being arrested for alleged possession of cocaine, before being released.
