Why Paul Hanlon turned down other clubs to join 'exciting Raith Rovers project' this summer

The 34-year-old Hibernian legend, who made 563 appearances for the Easter Road side between 2008 and 2024, said: "The three-year deal offered by Raith was obviously one part of me signing. But obviously looking from the outside I could see that Raith had a great season, it looked an exciting place to be.

"I looked at the squad, it was obviously full of talent and it looked like a good bunch of boys as well.

"You want to come into a good changing room and work with good people every day. That's proved to be the case. I just thought it was an exciting project to try and be successful at this latter stage of my career.

"As you get older you just learn more as you’re going along, you learn what works for your body and what doesn’t work.

"It’s maybe been trial and error over the years so you know what works and what to avoid.

"Training on astroturf every day as well is a bit different for me so you kind of adapt to that as well.

“I spent three years in the Championship with Hibs so I’m used to all the grounds, I’ve played at them all before at least once.

"It’s kind of what I expected, it’s enjoyable, the games are end to end and teams are going toe to toe with us every single week.

"No matter who you’re playing both teams fancy their chances of winning, so it’s exciting.”

When asked if he thinks Raith are ‘a Premiership club in waiting’, Hanlon added: "I think there’s been a lot of hard work done over the last year or so to kind of improve everything around the stadium. For us as players and for the supporters’ experience in terms of hospitality.

"It’s definitely a club that’s growing all the time, striving towards becoming a Premiership team.

"And obviously that all boils down to our performances on the pitch, that’s what’s going to get us there.

"We've not really spoken about positional targets as such. We have spoken about a points target over a block of games, but we've never really said: 'We're going to finish in a certain position'.

"We had an up and down start with a managerial change and a lot of injuries in the squad at the start of the season.

"We've had to come through that but we've got a pretty healthy squad at the minute apart from a couple of bigger injuries.

"We are confident we can pick up points in this league and we can see where that takes us.”

Hanlon and his Raith mates continue their Scottish Championship campaign at leaders Falkirk this Saturday, kick-off 3pm.

Sixth-placed Rovers – who have 15 points from 14 games – go into the match 20 points adrift of the Bairns who have played one game more.

But Raith did inflict one of only two league defeats on John McGlynn’s side this season when they prevailed 1-0 at Stark’s Park on September 28.