IT has been a campaign to remember so far for York City.

Adam Hinshelwood might have not expected to be in this position prior to the opening day visit to Southend United, but he won’t be complaining. A record-breaking season for York, which includes their best-ever start to a campaign.

Pre-Oldham Athletic on Boxing Day, City are top of the National League and are well within the conversation for promotion back to the Football League, despite only narrowly avoiding relegation on the final day of the last two seasons.

It’s not where Hinshelwood expected his side to be, with the boss reflecting on the season so far.

Hinshelwood laughed: “When you start a season you always want to have those high expectations, or certainly I do, but I think we’d all be lying if we said that this is where we thought we’d be at this stage!

“Normally we’d come in towards the end of last year and did just about [enough] to keep us in the division, and this year is about then laying a bit of a marker on how we want to play and trying to establish ourselves a bit more in the league.

“Now we’re in the position that we’re in, we’re thoroughly enjoying it and are doing all that we can to stay there.”

With 14 wins from a possible 23 National League matches so far, there’s a lot of happy memories that have already been made this season.

However, the standout moment of the campaign for Hinshelwood was the 2-1 victory away at FC Halifax Town.

Having fallen behind early on to Jamie Cooke’s strike, it took City until the 91st minute to respond.

Malachi Fagan-Walcott opened his account for the club to send over 2,000 travelling supporters into pandemonium, before Ollie Pearce secured a memorable three points with a 96th-minute winner.

The boss enthused: “I think there’s been some really good performances, especially at home because we’re scoring a lot of goals at home.

“But for the amount of fans we took and the way the Halifax game ended to be honest, we weren’t nowhere near at our best and it was probably the worst we’ve played this season, especially in that second-half.

Over 2,000 York City supporters witnessed late carnage in their 2-1 win over FC Halifax Town. (Image: Tom Poole) “We kept on going, grind it out and showed a real good togetherness.

“That was the sign of what good teams do when they’re not at their best, they keep going and manage to find a way.

“It’s no coincidence that it happened in front of 2,000 York fans behind the goal.”

There has also been a few moments of disappointment so far this season, with defeats to Forest Green Rovers, Boston United and Altrincham.

The Altrincham match, which was a 3-0 defeat in November, was one to forget for Hinshelwood, who took the loss as a learning curve.

He admitted: “Altrincham away again. I was really disappointed with our performance there. Not the players at all, it was more myself and the team I put out that day.

“In hindsight and looking back, we’d like to have that game again and I learned a lot from it.

“That was probably the downside so far.”

City have also had a lot of standout players so far this campaign, with Ollie Pearce leading the goalscoring charts and Harrison Male joint-top of the golden glove so far.

But not forgetting the contributions of the defence, the midfield, and the wingers, Hinshelwood refused to choose one player as his Player of the Season so far, instead putting his side’s good form down to the togetherness that has been established within the camp.

“It’s tough really. I think I’d give it to the collective group for them all coming together as well as they have.

“Everyone has been needed. We forget about Len’s [Lenell John-Lewis] contribution because Ollie Pearce has probably stole the limelight of late.

“His contribution of coming off the bench earlier on in the season was massive for us.

Harrison Male has been an impressive figure for York City this season. (Image: Tom Poole) “Harrison and Rory have made important saves to keep clean sheets for us.

“I think it would be wrong to single out one sort of player, that’s for the fans and that to do at the end of the season, rightly so.

“At this stage, the collective coming together as well as they have would be the key thing that has really pleased me.”

One credit which has been directed towards Hinshelwood is for his recruitment so far this season, which is yet to show huge weaknesses in a team that has risen to the top of the league.

“It’s not just myself, but credit to the players for coming in and adapting so well and doing as well as they have.

“There have been players where I think there is still more to come from as well, but all of them are showing their quality.

“I’ve got full faith in the squad that we’ve got now. It’s a real good squad, and day in, day out people have got to be at their best to try and warrant wearing the York City shirt.

“That’s what you want as a manager, and we’ve definitely got that with the group of players that we’ve got together.”