Declan Rudd says he’s enjoying his football and feels in good form ahead of his former loan club Charlton Athletic’s visit to Deepdale.
The goalkeeper made his 150th appearance for the Lilywhites at the weekend against Blackburn Rovers and is keen to ensure that he maintains his level of performance, starting against the Addicks on Saturday.
“I probably feel the best I’ve felt for a long time out on the pitch. Day-to-day work with Gouldy [Jonathan Gould] is brilliant and the knowledge he can give me is priceless. You can’t buy that knowledge,” he told iFollow PNE.
“It’s an enjoyable atmosphere around the camp at the minute. But we all know that form can change at any time so it’s just about trying to keep that going, working hard and trying to hit the end of the season and give the team as much help as I can to get to where we want to go.”
The PNE stopper believes now is the perfect time for the team to improve on their recent form: “We need to get another win on the board,” he continued. “We’ve hopefully gone through a rough patch now. A few injuries are starting to come back, new singings coming in and it’s starting to look like a full squad’s coming back in to play again, so we need to start winning games.
“Luckily enough, everyone’s playing each other and everyone’s losing one week then winning the next. No one’s really running away with it, so we’re still in and around it all and that’s important, but it can only go on for so long. We need to make sure we get back to winning and start pushing the teams above us and putting a bit of pressure on them.
“We were up there really flying high and then within the space of three or four games we’ve dropped out of the top six and we’re looking above us trying to climb back in there.
“It can change week to week but there’s still a lot of football to be played and that’s the one positive thing. There’s no need to panic at all. We play all the teams around us again so it’s all still to play for.
“That’s the strange thing about this league; it’s never actually over until the last day so we just need to get back to how we started the season.”
On reaching his personal landmark at Ewood Park, Rudd said: “It’s a nice milestone to hit. To play that many games for any club is an achievement and I’m lucky enough to have done it here over two different spells.
“But that’s why I wanted to come back and play games here, because I loved every minute of it when I was on loan previously. To come back and get to that milestone is good and hopefully I can hit the next one.”
Rudd spent the 2016/17 season on loan at Charlton and says he’s pleased to see some of his former club’s recent struggles coming to an end.
“I think for the first time in probably four of five years, there’s a little bit of stability starting to happen there. For a club like Charlton to be where it is now after where it was 10 or 15 years ago is mad really, but it just goes to show that any team can hit a little bit of trouble and it’s easily done.
"But it’s good to see them starting to get that stability and getting back to the type of club they used to be,” he added.
Watch the full interview with Declan on iFollow PNE now by clicking on the video above.