The highlight of England’s cricketing summer – the five-match Test series against India – will still be very much in its infancy when the new Gloucestershire Northern Senior Football League season gets under way.

The league’s big kick-off is on Saturday 4th August with the first-round ties in the Reg Davis Memorial Cup and honorary general secretary John Green said with some pride: “We’ve got a full set of fixtures.”

That means 16 games – the league is made up of two divisions of 16 – and four days later on Wednesday 8th August the second round of the competition, which is named in honour of the league’s former chairman and president who died some 12 years ago, will be played.

The league programme kicks off on Saturday 11th August and Green said they try to get the cup competition completed by late September or early October at the latest.

“I was told by a groundhopper that’s it’s the earliest completed competition in the country,” Green laughed.

“We have to start the season when we do to get all the fixtures played. Last season, because of all the bad weather, we didn’t finish until 19th May.”

It’s a good standard of football too in a league that celebrates its centenary in 2022. “It’s one down from the national league system,” explained Green, 73, who lives in Gloucester.

“The winners go into the County League which is step seven of the national league.”

That’s depending on whether their facilities are up to the required standard, of course, and last year’s Division One champions Charlton Rovers, who also won the Reg Davis Cup, will be playing in the Northern Senior League again in 2018/19.

Green, who is originally from Sunderland, believes Charlton will be the team to beat this season.

“You can’t look past them,” he said. “They did the double last season and seem to be a very well organised club.”

While Charlton Rovers and the other 31 teams will be doing their stuff on their pitch, Green will be doing his level best off the pitch to make sure everything runs smoothly.

“As general secretary I run the league,” he said. “I sort out the handbooks, the fixtures and I used to do the referee appointments.”

It’s a job he’s being doing for more than two decades, having taken over in 1997 from Will Pember after working as his assistant for the previous six years.

“When I moved down here I played for CEGB in Barnwood,” explained Green. “When I stopped playing I managed them and we got promoted to the Northern Senior League.

“I went on the league’s management committee in 1985 and it all went from there.”

So how much time does he spend on Northern Senior League business?

“I work for the league every day except Christmas Day,” he said.

And how does that go down with his wife Carole?

“She hates football,” he chuckled. “She lets me get on with it!”