IBROX never used to be much fun. As an Aberdeen fan, you would be exposed in the lower deck of the Broomloan Road end, bracing yourself for the splat of half-eaten pies and the splash of Bovril and urine cocktails. All around your little enclave, braying Bluenoses extolled the virtue of wading through Catholic blood. Then, just as you started to tut from the comfort of the moral high ground, some of your compadres would start to postulate that the 66 deaths in the 1971 Ibrox disaster was a memory to cherish. One day the obvious dawned on me: I derived little enjoyment from my trips to Ibrox, so why go?

Saturday was my first time at Ibrox in three years, and it was a changed place. After years of tacit acceptance, the powers that be have finally started scrutinising the Rangers songbook. The recent investigation into chants at the Villareal Champions League games may have found - subject to an appeal - that UEFA needn't do anything about the Billy Boys, but the international focus on Rangers seems to have made the Ibrox hordes think twice about the words that tumble out of their mouths. On Saturday, I heard only one muted rendition of the line "We're up to our knees in Fenian blood." What's more, the lack of negative energy to feed on appeared to affect the away end: I heard not one reference to the Ibrox disaster, albeit there were a few choruses of the mean-spirited song about Iain Durrant's injury at Pittodrie in 1988.

Oh, and we're in a new corner bit next to the Broomloan End now, with no upper tier hanging over us. So no pie-and-pee showers. And I witnessed Aberdeen avoid defeat at Ibrox for the first time in 14 years. Ibrox was fun. I might even go back.