The passionate sportsman, who has played rugby league most of his life and even dabbled in Aussie rules, will represent Victoria at the National Touch League in Coffs Harbour in May. It's been a journey of dedication.

Ferguson was always talented but at 42, recently dropped more than 20 kilograms and is in peak condition to battle Australia's best.

"Words can't describe it at the moment. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time," the Warrnambool-based man, who is originally from Brewarrina in New South Wales, said.

"I'll work 16 hours in my job as a traffic controller and then drive straight to Melbourne. It's four hours of straight training on a weekend.

"If I feel up to it, when I get home from work, I'll go training again. Just doing things like sprint work, footwork, ball skills."

Ferguson stumbled upon trials for the squad - he's a regular in the Warrnambool competition - but thought he'd test himself against more seasoned opposition in Ballarat on the advice of a friend.

The rest, as they say, is history.

"I thought it was just like a low-level competition. I said 'oh yeah, I'll put my hand up'. I went up there but I knew straight away it was a representative level but I thought it was maybe low-level representative," he said.

"I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I thought it was just normal. After one of the matches, a bloke came up to me and asked if I'd like to come down to Melbourne to try out.

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"I thought it might be a harder level, which is good because I'm used to a really fast game. I went down to Melbourne and we had a training session. I was like 'what's going on here?'.

"After training the coach said 'thanks boys for trying out for the Victorian state team'. He said 'congratulations, you've made it'. I thought I was going down there to play in a competition."

His partner, Cheree, said Ferguson was humble and didn't always recognise his quality and ability.

She said making the state team would help her partner of more than 20 years, with which she has three children, "tick something off his bucket list".

Ferguson said he hoped to inspire more people to pick up touch football in the south-west. He urged those interested to play at Deakin University on Monday nights.

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