Danny Mills has revealed how Ebbsfleet players past and present convinced him to sign at Stonebridge Road.

The former Whitehawk striker was impressed when he met Fleet boss Daryl McMahon and looked around the stadium at the end of the season.

But with his career at a crossroads, Mills wasn't prepared to rush into a deal and the 26-year-old sought advice from some of the people best qualified to dish it out.

Mills said: "The club can talk to you and tell you how great the club is - and they did really well at selling the club to me - but until you actually speak to people that have been there or are there, you don’t know - from a player’s point of view - what it’s really like there.

"I spoke to Osei Sankofa, who I’m really close with, Anthony Cook, Michael West, Alex Osborn, Paul Lorraine and Aaron McLean, who I’ve known for a long time from my time at Peterborough.

"I spoke to all these players and I asked their honest opinion.

"Even while I was away on holiday, I messaged Aaron McLean and Anthony Cook. I said to them 'I’m on the verge of signing and I want to get more clarity on what the club is really like' and they said there’s no better club to be at.

"They were brilliant, they said 'you’ll fit perfectly here.' It’s really nice when people say positive things about you.

"Another factor in me coming here is that I do know a few of the players. I feel I’ll be stepping into a dressing-room where a lot of the players know who I am solely through playing against me over the last four or five years; Kenny Clark, Dave Winfield, Nathan Ashmore - who I’ve scored goals against - these are players who know me and it’s going to be comfortable for me to step into that dressing-room knowing there don’t need to be any teething problems. They know how I play and what I do.

"That’s one of the things the manager said to me, 'we know who you are, there’s no grey areas, we know what Danny Mills can do.'

"It’s going to be great to go into a dressing-room where the players know my game already. They know how I want to play, what I want to do and how I score most of my goals. That was a massive factor in me coming here."

Croydon-born Mills, who spent almost five years at Whitehawk, has recently moved to Chatham and works at David Lloyd in Kings Hill - walking distance from Ebbsfleet's training ground.

"It seems like it’s fate that it’s all happened," he said. "It’s worked out brilliantly for me to be honest.

"It was quite an overwhelming experience for me (at the end of the season) because I hadn’t been out of contract for a few years. I’d been at Whitehawk for five years so it was really strange to have so many people phoning and texting and meeting people.

"There was quite a bit of interest and it was just about me taking my time and establishing where would be the best place for me to play.

"After being at a club for so long, the next move was crucial.

"I took a while, well over a month, to decide where I wanted to go.

"There were quite a few clubs that were interested but ultimately, the one that was going to work for me and what was going to be the best move, in my opinion, was Ebbsfleet."

Mills is Fleet's first new signing since their promotion to the National League.

He said: "The ambition of the club is there to be seen. Players talk about ambition at football clubs all the time but you can physically see the ambition of the club. There’s a new stand being built, they’re starting the other stand imminently and the club have been promoted.

"It’s a really good professional set-up and the opportunity to train full-time again was really important to me. I’ve been training Tuesday and Thursday evenings for the last five years and I haven’t trained full-time since I was at Peterborough so it’s been a very long time since I’ve trained in the day.

"At this stage in my career, to have that opportunity to not only step up into a higher division but to train full-time while doing that was very important.

"I feel I’ve done all I can in the Conference South. I’ve proved I can score goals at that level and I want to do the same at Ebbsfleet, score loads of goals, play in big games, in front of big crowds and try to be an important player there."