The Paul Davis Column: Up close and personal in the lower leagues

It was around an hour before a Tuesday-evening kick-off at Blundell Park and the Millers players were warming up on the pitch as Steve Evans and I were enjoying a good, old chinwag.

Joe Skarz had raided the dressing-room stash to provide the beverage now burning the sides of my mouth.

I love pre-season. You get closer to the action, closer to the team, closer to the staff in the weeks before the real stuff begins.

The summer takes you to new outposts where you encounter new people and see new sights. I'd never been to Stamford or Spalding before this year but I'd be keen to go back to both. I can also legitimately wear a T-shirt saying ‘I was there when no-one knew who Jack Holmes was’.

I'm as delighted as anyone when the Millers are promoted to the Championship yet my heart lies in the tiers further down.

For example, the media suite at Leicester City - and I love Leicester after they gave me free beer to take home last season - may have the sleek feel of a cafe on the top floor of a posh department store but there's something altogether more charming about non-league and lower-league set-ups.

Take League Two Grimsby ... it wasn't a suite, it was a hut, with eight chairs, hardly any of which matched and none of which were an appropriate height for the bench that journos were working on.

Either you brushed the ceiling with your head as you reached down in vain towards your laptop or your bum scraped the floor and your arms stretched upwards as your eyes just about managed to appear at the level of your keyboard.

It was run by a volunteer who'd donated some of his collection of Mariners memorabilia. It decorated the walls and became a real talking point on the night. He also had milk, sugar and tea bags, so I liked him even more. Had he fetched biscuits, he'd have been my best friend.

After a 2-2 draw, I did some on-the-record stuff with Evans who, by the way, has been brilliant with the media in general and me in particular since his April return.

We've talked after every pre-season match and he's always made himself available on the phone around deadline day so that the Advertiser can provide all the latest news.

“Is that all right for you?” he asks after most interviews. It's always more than all right.