Beith manager Johnny Millar aims to do his talking on the pitch

He guided Beith to the title in season 2009/10 – and enjoyed the fruits of a good run in the senior Scottish Cup the following season.

But you won’t find him shouting from the rooftops about what the Cabes will achieve in the forthcoming season – it’s simply not his style.

As a player, he did his talking on the pitch, and had several winner's medals – including Scottish Cup successes with both Arthurlie and Glenafton Athletic – to show for it.

As a manager, he does his talking from the dug-out, and is currently enjoying his second spell as boss at Bellsdale Park.

But Millar is ready for the off, and despite losing several players during a busy close season, he will be on the training ground for the start of pre-season on Monday night.

He said: “Preparations for the new season are going well. We have 19 signed players and are in the market for one more – although it’s in a problem position!

“We have managed to sign Stephen Grindlay from Dumbarton. He’s a good goalkeeper and will be a good acquisition.

“Jamie Wilson and Colin Watt have also joined us, from Hurlford, as well as a couple of others. A few players have left the club so we needed to get a few in.

“We’ve had a wee bit of a re-think about the playing pool, though, and are signing younger players, roughly in the 23 or 24 age bracket.

“We’re trying to build for the future while also looking for success this coming season, so it’s a bit of a balancing act.

“Mind you, at this time of year all the top clubs are all trying to get the same players, so it’s difficult to get everyone you want.”

It’s five years since Beith won the top-flight title, during Miller’s first spell as boss, but you get the impression it won’t be his last.

He said: “We started well last year, then hit a bad patch. We finished sixth, and while it wasn’t a ‘bad’ sixth, we were still a good bit behind the top two.

“I’m already looking forward to the new season, it will be another good league, perhaps even tougher, with Pollok, Shettleston and Rob Roy coming up.

“Consistency will be vital, because if you go five or six games without a win you will be fighting relegation.

“Nobody is tipping us to win the title this season, but nobody did that either when we won it in 2010, and we all know that anything is possible.

“You get the people who say that only one or two teams are capable of winning it, so what’s the point of the rest competing then?

“We know what it takes to win the top league, as we’ve done it before, but it’s a hard league to win. In saying that, we will start the season with the mentality that we can do well.

“The last time we won it we lost just a single game. We had a great season, but perhaps the fact we exited the Scottish Cup early gave us a helping hand.”

And while Millar expects big things from the likes of Pollok and Petershill, he still thinks the winner will come from Ayrshire.

He said: “Most of the money is in Ayrshire at the moment, so a lot of the teams down here have bigger budgets.

“Traditionally, Auchinleck Talbot aren’t big spenders, but they can still attract the best players because they have a habit of winning things.

“But one of the biggest shocks of last season was seeing Clydebank go down. I didn’t see that one coming. They were a good side and played us off the park, although we won 2-1.

“That shows what kind of league the Premier Division is. Anything can happen and we will giving it our best shot.”

Beith will prepare for the new campaign with five eagerly-awaited challenge matches.

They are: Saturday, July 18: Whitehill Welfare v Beith; Tuesday, July 21: Beith v Queen’s Park; Saturday, July 25: Beith v Linlithgow Rose; Tuesday, July 28: Beith v Maybole; and Friday, July 31: Sauchie v Beith.

Millar said: “We like tough games to start with and it will give us an idea of how the new players are gelling together.

“If we can get some decent results in pre-season it will set us up nicely for the sectional League Cup. We are all looking forward to the start of the season immensely.”