ANDY Walsh doesn't go to Old Trafford anymore. He was a Manchester United season-ticket holder for years and recalls the Law, Best and Charlton era with a hushed reverence that borders on the religious. But he doesn't go to Old Trafford now because he got fed up. He became uneasy as the Stretford End's atmosphere was dowsed by all-seater rules and the pursuit of corporate bucks. He was irked by a new and inaccessible training park that symbolised the increasing distance between player and fan. And he decided he'd had enough when an American family decided to offset its debt by taking over a dinky little soccer club across the Atlantic.

Andy now follows the newly FC United of Manchester, a team he formed with other disaffected Manchester United fans last summer, and of which he is general manager. The side plays 10 leagues below his old team and attract crowds of 4,000, dwarfing the gates of their opponents. He was interviewed on Radio 4 yesterday, and expressed no regret that he'd sacrificed the annual pursuit of Premiership and European glory for the muddy toils of the lower leagues. It wasn't about the winning, he explained, it was about the lifelong bond that existed between a fan and a club. The problem was that Andy just didn't recognise the same club he'd started supporting decades before.

On Monday, I didn't watch the Scottish football highlights. The SPL had reverted to predictable type: Rangers and Celtic won, Hearts and Hibs stumbled. The season to that point had the been the most exciting in more than a decade, despite my own team's unremitting mediocrity, but the old patterns had re-emerged and I headed to bed early.

The interview with Andy Walsh made me reassess things. I can turn up at Pittodrie five to three (usually on a Saturday) and get a seat near the half-way line. It's on the expensive side, but if I sacrifice that DVD I was thinking about buying I've just about got the ticket price. Were I a few years younger, I might go down during the week and watch the players train on the open spaces of Seaton Park or Balgownie. I can speculate that Stewart Milne only got involved at Pittodrie because he saw an opportunity for his mass-produced homes, but I won't deny that our chairman grew up just a few miles from Aberdeen and can reasonably claim to have been a lifelong Dons supporter.

The standard and competitiveness of Scottish football have plummeted since my first game in 1980, but in many ways things haven't changed all that much at Aberdeen FC. The Andy Walshes of the north-east of Scotland are still to be found at Pittodrie.