Ashford United manager Craig Stone tells of the advice he received from former Gillingham boss Steve Evans during their time together at Priestfield

Ashford manager Craig Stone has carried advice from former Gillingham boss Steve Evans into his job at Homelands.

Stone ran the Gills’ under-18s and under-23s during Evans’ time at Priestfield and spent plenty of time with the Scot, a serial promotion winner during his long career in management.

The Nuts & Bolts boss spoke about his spell with Evans while discussing the use of data-tracking vests at the Isthmian South East club.

Stone trusts his eye - as advised by Evans - while also embracing the benefits of technology to tell him exactly how far players have run.

“I do go on the eye,” said Stone.

“It was something Steve Evans always used to say to me at Gillingham - ‘Stoney, the eye doesn’t lie’.

“It’s something you can’t avoid when he said it all the time, and he’s right, you can see by the eye where people are at and what people are doing.

“But what the data does do is give you some context.

“Our data at VCD (3-1 defeat last month) was way lower than it needed to be and way lower than it was in the previous five or six games when we were really good.

“The data was right back up again against Jersey (1-1 draw), so you can see why we had a poor performance against VCD and the data backs that up.

“The players see the facts and facts are hard to avoid.

“We had a lot of 8ks in terms of distance covered at VCD but when we played Jersey we had distances of 11 or 12k and most were above 10, which is sometimes the difference between winning and losing a game or performing badly or performing well.”

Evans’ words of wisdom went beyond trusting the eye.

And his methods rubbed off on Stone, who has led Ashford up the table since taking charge before Christmas.

“Another thing he always used to say was don’t leave it to the