Joe Ellul says something was missing after being tempted out of retirement by Ramsgate in a player-assistant manager role.

Centre-half Ellul spent the first half of last season at Southwood, quickly becoming a crowd favourite as Rams hit top spot in Isthmian South East and reached the FA Cup second round.

He left for National League South Welling in January, helping them pull off an unlikely escape from relegation before hanging up his boots at the end of the season.

Retirement has proved short-lived, though, with the 35-year-old accepting an offer to return to Ramsgate where he’ll be working alongside Ben Smith, who remains interim manager after briefly making way for Tony Russell this summer.

He’s been catching up on his fitness after spending the last four months “sitting on my bum drinking beer” and has shown his commitment by moving house from London to Ramsgate.

“In my head I was done with football,” said Ellul, who has declared himself available for Rams’ league opener at AFC Croydon this Saturday.

“I went away but I was talking to my wife about it and I just felt like something was missing.

“I stopped playing so we could move away but I was trying to help the club get players in and then I saw Ben went and came back.

“I spoke to Tom Hadler (goalkeeper) and he said why don’t you come back? I then spoke to James (Lawson, chairman) and Ben and it just fitted well.

“They offered me assistant manager and player and I thought let’s do it. That’s the road I want to go down eventually, becoming a manager, so it means I get to learn at the same time as playing.

“I don’t know if I retired too soon because I felt as though I was ready. I don’t know what it was.

“There was just something missing from what’s been part of personality for so long, which is football.

“Not having that was sending me mental. I was like, what do I do with myself now? I needed to fix it. I want to play football.

“This came up and it was a no-brainer.

“I live in Ramsgate now. I’ve moved there to be closer to the club and the community and the coaching side of things.”

Ellul has had a couple of training sessions and played 45 minutes in a 2-0 friendly defeat at Bracknell on Saturday.

He’s confident he’ll be ready for the weekend as Rams, who missed out on the title to Cray Valley last season, start their latest promotion bid.

“Considering I haven’t done anything for four months, I’ve felt good,” he said.

“I’ve sat on my bum drinking beer. That’s all I’ve done.

“But the way it’s going, I’ll be absolutely fine for Saturday and then it’s about getting minutes and sessions in my legs.

“I’ll be doing extra during the week, training full-time essentially, because I’ve got the pitch I can use now.

“I’m getting up to scratch quicker and I’ll carry on doing extra.”

Ramsgate’s preparation for the new season has been far from ideal in light of the managerial upheaval that saw Russell quit after 25 days.

But they have still assembled a decent squad with Ellul’s former Maidstone team-mates Tushaun Walters and Roarie Deacon among the latest signings, along with ex-Tonbridge man Lewis Gard.

“We’re just going to push and see what we can do and see if we can get over the line this time,” said Ellul.

“We’ve got an opportunity, we’ve signed some decent players, we’ve got boys who can play in National South.

“I think we’ve got the right chemistry building within the team, we’re understanding more about each other.

“We’re a few weeks behind everyone else because of the disruption in pre-season but I think we’ll be all right.

“It’s a marathon not a sprint. You’ve just got to get on with it.

“When we won the league at Maidstone we had probably the worst pre-season I’ve ever seen.

“It was terrible but we still got over the line.

“It’s just taking it one game at a time. You aren’t going to win anything in the first 10 games. It doesn’t matter if you’re five points behind, 10 points behind, or 15 or 20 points clear.”

The opening match will be an early test as Rams go to ambitious league new boys AFC Croydon, who are managed by ex-Gillingham and Maidstone winger Jermaine McGlashan.

“They’re a team on the up and they’ve got a good manager in Glash, who I know really well and played with at Maidstone,” said Ellul.

“They’ve got good backing, good owners and they’re going to look to push this year.

“We’ve got to go there with the mindset that it’s the first game, we’ve just got to try and get points on the board.

“We lost the first game last year and look at the run we went on.

“Nothing’s won or lost on Saturday. Obviously we want to start strong and get those first three points and they’ll have the same mindset.

“It’s a clash of two big teams but we’ll just go about our business quietly.

“No one else is talking about us and I prefer it like that.

“We’ll get on with what we’ve got to do and hopefully at the end of the season, we can lift the trophy.”