The formation of a new step six league, the East Midlands Counties League, seems, on balance, to be a good thing.

For the first time in donkeys' years, Heanor Town will be participating in the FA Cup, and the imminent opening of their new dressing rooms must provide a promotion impetus.

Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire are represented, and the 18 founder members are - Bardon Hill Sports, Barrow Town, Blackwell MW, Borrowash Vics, Dunkirk, Ellistown, Gedling MW, Gedling Town, Graham St Prims, Greenwood Meadows, Heanor Town, Holbrook MW, Holwell Sports, Ibstock United, Kirby Muxlow, Radford and St Andrews SC.

The re-shuffled Central Midlands League is a much less convincing vehicle for ambitious clubs.

The grandiose styling of its top division as 'Supreme' with its second echelon designated 'Premier', to me seemed to flow naturally from its wildly ambitious origins.

If it was hard to credit such pretentious titles being bestowed on the CML's original members, how much more taxingon our collective gullibility are the credentials of the 18 clubs proposed for each of the divisions to the League's AGM on June 25.

This competition was once seriously mooted as a potential Midlands Premier Division, with once seriously successful Midland Counties clubs like Arnold Town, Belper Town, Heanor Town and Long Eaton United being seduced into joining.

Our neighbours Kimberley Town were another notable casualty. One slight consolation for Kimberley is that 'promotion' to the 'Supreme' should avoid regular trips to Humberside and even Mablethorpe.

One slight advantage the CML might have provided for our newly-formed reserves side is the standard of grounds within their proposed 'Reserves Supreme Division'.

That possible edge will, however, be more than off-set by the return to the pre-historic practice of 'club linesmen', as opposed to official assistants.

I did stress last week that changes to our provisional list of warm-up games were virtually inevitable and on July 9 we will travel to Ollerton Town, our county senior cup final opponents of last May, instead of to Stafford Rangers.

Our scheduled trip on July 15 to Gedling Town is off and we will instead play that match on Saturday, August 2 at 3pm.

The game at Kimberley, an attempt to resurrect the Horace Hibbert Memorial Shield fixture, will now be on Monday, July 28.

Grimsby Town will, as promised by 'local lad' Alan Buckley, play a pre-season practice game at Coronation Park on Wednesday, July 30, with an earlier than usual kick-off time of 7pm.

As a mark of respect to our opponents, who got to Wembley last season, we will change our kit to allow Grimsby to play in their traditional black and white.