Ryan Hayes summer move to Chatham Town from Dartford surprised many, but he has been an integral part of the Medway clubs early season success which included a weekend hat trick in the 8-3 hammering of AFC Croydon Athletic.

His departure from Princes Park after making over 600 appearances for the club, 627 to be precise leaving Hayes third in the Darts all time appearance list, to play in SCEFL this season raised eyebrows when Scott Lindsey secured his signature.

Speaking to KSN after the game, speaking about his first half hat-trick, Hayes told us, “Happy with the first half performance even if second half I don’t think we really came out as well as we talked about at half time, it was one of those games that was dead at half time; its hard to get motivated for the second half but I’ve got to be happy with three goals, three points, happy days!”

“We get told to play with the freedom and attack at every opportunity so with Matty Bodkin coming back in today after he became a Dad in the week, he was buzzing with the assists and getting the minutes under his belt.”

Hayes then admitted that his signing for Chatham was helped by another close season signing, Andy Pugh.

He told us: “Pughy signed and he said to me to come training and see how well run it is. I came down and just fell in love with the place, the Gaffer is different level.

“I’ve been lucky where I’ve had some good managers, Tony Burman for fourteen years but Scotty brings something entirely different to the table! I came down to this level and still have to prove people wrong, you still get the comments; people said that my legs had gone for the League above last year but I’m fully enjoying my football here and its given me a new lease of life.”

“I’m happy being here and I’m happy to be playing here. It’s a project, it’s not just this season, we want to keep building this season and the season after, it’s a big project here and I’m happy to be a part of it!

“It reminds me massively of what Tony (Burman) did at Dartford, I said that to Pughy a couple of weeks ago. When I first went to Dartford, they had a plan in place with the new ground and to try and get up the Leagues and its exactly the same here. The project that goes on behind the scenes and on the pitch theres so much more to come for Chatham.”

“I genuinely believe that we can go as far as we want. We showed that at Folkestone in the FA Cup, I know we beat them three nil, we were still disappointed afterwards with the way that we’d played. We know we’re a lot better than we played that day.

“There is no limit as the manager will not let us die off or fade off, and I know there are people out there who want us to get beat week in week out, but he wont have it as there are standards to be set and we have set our standards. We’ve got to keep that level up every week.”