Former Exeter City striker Jayden Stockley has said that the club still holds a special place in his heart. The 31-year-old spent two spells with the Grecians and said that he had a fantastic time at St James Park, albeit tinged with sadness that he couldn’t help City to a promotion.

Stockley initially arrived in Devon in January 2016 on loan, where he scored 10 goals in 22 games, but the Grecians were unable to afford to sign him permanently. But Stockley did return in August 2017 when he arrived for a club record fee of around £100,000.

He scored 41 goals in 76 games under Paul Tisdale’s management before leaving in January 2019 to Preston North End for a fee in the region of £750,000. Since then he has gone on to play Charlton Athletic, Fleetwood Town and now currently Port Vale back in League Two.

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“I look back at Exeter as just being such a fantastic football club with great stability”, Stockley said to SkyBet. “It’s a club that gives a foundation for young players to go and express themselves. Their model is something that a lot of football clubs should look at, how they can bring talent through and allow them to express themselves on the pitch. It's a football club that I always thought maybe one day I'd return to, maybe not now, but maybe in some format looking further on in my career.

“Exeter is such a unique place. You get such a great feeling when you're there and you’ve really got to buy into it, because obviously all the boys are from there. It's not like other clubs, the location means that most of the boys are living locally. So, we used to do coffee clubs, nights out, and everyone would be there. It's such a unique environment. Luckily, when I was there, we had all the boys that bought into it.

“Unfortunately, the only thing negative about my time there was that we missed out in the Play Off final to Coventry City, which was unlucky at the time, but they were a fantastic side. So, looking back on that moment in my career, my spell at Exeter is something I cherish.

“Ultimately, I look back at that spell at Exeter with a little bit of sadness that I couldn't do the job and get us promoted. It’s very important that your goals mean something, and that's what I'm looking forward to doing this season.”

In total, Stockley scored 51 times from 97 games with the Grecians, by far his most prolific spells of his career. So do the three years at the club rank top in terms of his goalscoring output?

“Yeah, I think definitely as an out and out goal scorer,” he said to SkyBet. “Your game develops over time, especially the sort of player that I am but if you’re talking about goals, that's obviously where I was best. Maybe my all round play wasn't as good as perhaps it is now, but in terms of the ruthlessness of the goal scoring, I think that's when I hit a real purple patch, and got my move to Preston, which was life changing at that point in your career.

“Looking back, I'd say I was fully focused on goals at that time, nothing else mattered, and that’s probably due to a little bit of youth. Once you get older, you start to think about a lot of other things, maybe what the team needs at the time.”

Despite the goals that Stockley netted, City couldn’t achieve that promotion while he was at the club, suffering a play-off final defeat to Coventry City in the 2017-18 season. The following season City finished ninth.

“I think it was just the bond between the group - not many times do you get that in your career, and I'm really starting to feel it now,” Stockley said of just how special that group of players was," he said to SkyBet.

“You get different personalities that gel, and different cultures. It's just amazing for them all to come together and to feel safe in each other's company and we had that at Exeter. The loan lads that came in were absolutely fantastic and gelled with the squad straight away.

“We had a balance of youth players and older players, and it was somewhere that you wanted to be, and just somewhere where you felt appreciated. That all probably came from the culture set by the manager Paul Tisdale at the time.”