THERE is proper meat inside my bridie. This is a surprise; on a Saturday afternoon I’m used to the factory-floor scrapings of the Scotch pie. OK, it’s lukewarm, but this is still relative luxury. Caterers at Dunfermline Athletic Football Club – you are to be congratulated.

You get used to the lowest common denominator when you go to watch football: cheerleaders going through the motions to mid-80s poodle rock; five-year-old boys missing their birthday message because the tannoy barely works; contracted security barely disguising their contempt for you. Given they way they are treated, it’s little wonder that football crowds are often mean-spirited and puerile.

There were 6,500 people at East End Park on Saturday, a figure that prompted an away-end chorus of “What a shitey home support.” But wait a minute – what else is going to pull so many people to a modest town in Fife? If an aspirant boy band or the Antiques Roadshow drew a few hundred people to Dunfermline, it would be a big event. But familiarity breeds contempt; Michael Aspel or a fake-tanned pop chancer might make the front page of the Dunfermline Press and West of Fife Advertiser; a Pars player will struggle to escape the back-page ghetto unless he lands in the sheriff court.

A crowd of 6,500 at East End Park is a long way from shitey: take away the sizeable Aberdeen support and that’s still thousands of people who troop loyally along year after year to follow a generally mediocre team. Someone behind the scenes has decided that these people deserve decent half-time fodder. One day they might even turn the ovens up a notch or two.