“IT’S all slightly surreal because only big clubs play in the FA Trophy,” said St Neots Town chairman Mike Kearns ahead of the Saints’ historic debut in the competition on Saturday.

“IT’S all slightly surreal because only big clubs play in the FA Trophy,” said St Neots Town chairman Mike Kearns ahead of the Saints’ historic debut in the competition on Saturday.

Following their bye in the second qualifying round, the Saints face Sutton Coldfield Town at the Hunts Post Community Stadium in the first qualifying round and the chairman said: “It’s the club’s very first game in the competition so it’s another milestone for us – it’s going to be a big day.”

Kearns and manager Dennis Greene went to watch Northern Premier League Division One side Sutton Coldfield when they drew with Rugby Town in the competition’s opening round – before they beat Rugby 4-0 in the replay.

“They played good flowing football,” he said. “They play at the same level as us – but they play on Astro so they like to play football – it should be an evenly contested game.

“I think Dennis might make a few changes – but we’ll see.”

Then, on Monday night, St Neots travel to Burnham in Buckinghamshire for their re-arranged Southern League Division One Central game.

Burnham were unable to play on the original date because of their involvement in the FA Cup – so the two clubs have squeezed this one in at short notice.

“We’re on a roll,” said Kearns, who was maybe overstating St Neots’ case a little, considering they beat Northwood at home on Saturday, but before that were without a league game for 21 days after their surprise loss to AFC Hayes on September 24.

However, as Kearns explained, no one team has pulled away at the top while the Saints have been twiddling their thumbs.

“If we get three or four good results in the division now – put a real run together – we could really start to see daylight.

“We dropped a few places during our break but when we won on Saturday we were straight back up to third.

“We’re not being bolshy but we haven’t seen anything that scares us in the league yet and we have played nearly all of the clubs in the top half already.

“I think there is only Biggleswade in the top ten that we haven’t played.

“We’ll be happy if we make the play-offs - and we’ll be happy if we win promotion.”