Purely belter isn't a phrase that has much resonance outside Newcastle. If a Geordie calls something "purely belter", writer-director Mark Herman explains, that means it is "absolutely fabulous, brilliant, fantastic."

The original title for the film was the rather more prosaic Season Ticket, but the project (adapted from Jonathan Tulloch's novel about two young lads desperate to acquire season tickets for Newcastle United) was rechristened late in post-production to stop it being mistaken for a football story. "Football is only the background," insists Herman. "It's not the main thrust."

Likewise, Purely Belter is Herman's third feature on the trot (after Brassed Off and Little Voice) made in the north of England. He's keen, though, to play the connection down and avoid being typecast as a director of "Northerns." "I don't want to get stuck in that," he says. "I'll run out of stories if I do."

After the long gestation period for Little Voice, which took almost a decade to reach the screen, Purely Belter was greenlit by FilmFour within months. Once he'd finished the screenplay, Herman and his casting agent Suzy Figgis scoured the North-East, looking for two likely lads to play the Geordie youngsters. They plumped for Chris Beattie and Gregg McLane. "Of the ones we saw, they were the two who had done least on screen. That's probably why I chose them. They seemed to be more natural than a lot of those kids up there, who've all been in Byker Grove and other TV shows."

A more familiar face is England and Newcastle star Alan Shearer. "They ask him for a season ticket," says Herman. "It's a bit of a crossroads in their lives. From that moment on, when their hero treats them with less respect than they expected, they go on a bit of a slide." Shearer's acting skills are well-known to Premier League referees, but do they translate to the big screen? All Herman will say is this: "I don't think he'll win a BAFTA, but it's an improvement on his McDonald's advertisement."

Herman shot at both St James' Park, Newcastle's home ground, and the Stadium Of Light, where rivals Sunderland play, and filming on match days was fraught. "Getting our kids into a crowd of 40,000 during a match was pretty tricky," Herman recalls.

Herman doesn't share his stars' affection for Newcastle, but supports Hull City FC who play in the lower leagues of English football. "There's never any problem getting a season ticket," he says, "but the point stands. A generation of kids is no longer able to get into football matches because season tickets cost six hundred quid."

Geoffrey Macnab