MIDFIELDER Rob Evans has credited Paul Carden and his Warrington Town teammates for allowing him to enjoy football again.

Despite still being relatively young at 23, Evans has over 250 senior games under his belt, mostly for Wrexham for whom he was made captain aged just 18.

The Evo-Stik Premier Division may be the lowest senior level he has played at since he first signed professional forms, but the Welshman says dropping down the leagues did not faze him.

Now, he wants to repay the club and manager Carden by helping Yellows to promotion to the National League North – a level he feels this current squad would easily compete at.

“I’m really enjoying it. We’ve got a good group of lads,” he said.

“If you look at the levels we have in our squad, we could definitely compete at the level above and probably in the National League as well.

“We’re all tight, we know each other very well and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

“I spoke to Cards before I signed and told him that dropping down didn’t really bother me that much.

“It was more about me getting back to playing the best I can and enjoying my football.

“I’m still 23 and my aim is to go full-time again, but I wanted to have a year or two of enjoying it again.

“At the moment, I’m doing that and it’s all thanks to Cards and the lads.

“I feel I’ve had a good career so far. To have played 250 games at 23 years of age is pretty good going.

“The time has come for me now, though, where I want to kick on. I want to win promotion with Warrington.”

Warrington Guardian:

Robbie Evans joined Warrington Town in the summer. Picture by John Hopkins

The Warrington squad only usually gets to train once a week – for an hour on Thursday evenings.

Evans admits making that adjustment from the full-time environment was tough at first but he says he is accustomed to his new routine now.

Despite the lack of training time, he also believes this Town side play better football than some of the professional sides he has played in.

“I started in full-time football when I was 16, so it took a little bit of time to get used to,” he said.

“It just means there’s more responsibility on yourself to do things like go to the gym or have a swim to keep yourself ticking over in between training and games.

“It was tough to adjust but I think I’m used to it now.

“The football that we’ve played in some games this year is better than plenty of full-time teams I’ve come up against and played in.

“We know we have the players to do that, like me and Ben (Garrity) in midfield and the guys at the back, who want to get the ball down rather than lump it forward.

“It brings all of us together as we’re all on the same wavelength.”

“We’ve got to know each other through pre-season and we thought ‘we can play football here.’

“We’ve just carried that on as the season has started.”