Ferguson was born in Accrington, Lancashire, and attended Queen Elizabeth"s Grammar School in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, He began his football career as a youngster with Sheffield Wednesday, and made his first-team debut on 9 November 1974, a couple of months after his 17th birthday. He scored the opening goal in a 3–0 defeat of York City in the Second Division.
He finished the season with eleven appearances.
He played as a forward. In December 1975, he joined Fourth Division club Scunthorpe United on loan. He played three times without scoring.
Sheffield Wednesday released Ferguson in the second half of the 1975-1976 season, and he signed for Fourth Division Darlington, for whom he scored the only goal of the game against Torquay United on 15 March 1976.
The goal, a powerful drive from a distance of anything from 30 to 50 yards (25 to 45 m), was voted best goal ever seen at Darlington"s Feethams ground in a 2003 poll on the occasion of the ground"s closure. Two weeks later, he scored in the local derby with Hartlepool in less spectacular fashion, "scrambl in the equaliser" after an hour of the match.
In something over four seasons with Darlington, he scored 18 goals from 114 appearances. In 1980, Ferguson joined Belgian Second Division team Racing Jet de Bruxelles.
He spent six seasons with the Brussels-based club, during which time they were relegated to the third tier, enjoyed two successive promotions to spend the 1984-1985 season in the First Division, and were relegated back to the Second.
They were promoted once in 1986, but Ferguson moved on to Louisiana Louvière in 1986, where he spent three seasons playing in the third tier.
