In Lennoxtown last Saturday afternoon, the sun is losing an uphill battle with the vast sheets of rain casting a penumbra over the Campsie Hills. Down below though, the young men of Campsie Minerva are prevailing in their biannual battle with local Kirkintilloch rivals, Harestanes AFC in Division One of the Caledonian League.

Earlier in the week, the Campsie Minerva’s eloquent Facebook chronicler had set the scene for this local derby in a prose style that owed more to Homer the Greek than Homer the Simpson. “When Campsie Minerva meet Harestanes,” he wrote, “it’s more than just a football match – it’s a clash steeped in local pride and decades of rivalry. For over 30 years, Lennoxtown and Kirkintilloch have battled it out on the amateur stage, from the early days in the Stirling & District League, through the Central Scottish and now in the Caledonian.

“Each encounter is fiercely contested, fuelled by history, community and the bragging rights that come with victory. This is East Dunbartonshire’s own derby: territorial, passionate and unmissable.”

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And so, fired up by the words of this local soothsayer I popped along to see my local team, half expecting to see the players emerging from behind a wall of fire as a plaided general shouted “Unleash hell”. There’s no grander setting for playing a game of football in west central Scotland than this. Behind us, the Campsie Hills rise to their highest point. On the other side is the old Campsie High Kirk where the shades of the village’s dearly departed still wander. The quality of football on show today is doing justice to the majesty of its natural theatre.

Once, in Scotland’s junior and amateur leagues the football was what happened in the breaks between the head-butting, the eye-gouging and the rattling of your opponent’s haw-maws. By the end of the game, the ball would have amassed enough air-miles to be granted admittance to British Airways’ platinum lounges. To call it sophisticated and elegant might be over-stating it, but today, the game is contested by a group of fit and skilful young men who are skelping the ball neatly along the ground in little moving triangles.

At this point, down on the touchline I’m........

© Herald Scotland