FORMER York City defender Ray Warburton has warned his old club not to expect an easy ride in the Nationwide Conference.

Warburton will line up against the Minstermen for Aldershot during tomorrow's Conference curtain-raiser at the Recreation Ground and he is hoping that the Hampshire club can go one better than last season's play-off final defeat against Shrewsbury Town and clinch promotion back into the Football League.

The 36-year-old centre-back also believes that York can be among the division's front-runners but has told the Bootham Crescent club to expect a tough season.

He said: "I think there are four or five clubs in with a chance of promotion and certainly think York could be there or thereabouts. I don't know how they have come out of last season but if they are all in a positive mood and are full-time, similar to ourselves, they should do well.

"I know they have signed Kevin Donovan, Paul Groves and Steve Davis and they are all proven players at Football League standard. I don't know what the younger players are like but if they have a sprinkling of talent and a good blend of experience and youth they can have a good season.

"Having said that, I think York will find out that the Conference is a hard league. You don't go down and just win every game. There's not a lot of difference between the top half of the Conference and the Third Division."

Northampton-based Warburton, who was a substitute in City's 1993 Wembley Division Three play-off final, has signed a new one-year deal with the Shots and is looking forward to facing his former club, saying: "It should be a good match. I don't know how York are playing but we will go out and play our normal attacking game.

"We have gone full-time and I'm pretty much full-time in that I'm doing the main training sessions but I am missing one or two days and that would be the case even if I lived in Aldershot.

"It's a 200-mile trip from my house but the main reason I don't train every day is because I need to look after myself at my age."

But Warburton feels the switch to full-time will benefit the rest of his team-mates this season, adding: "The club have done it sensibly and not thrown bucketloads at it. The wages have been increased slightly but there's a lot of good young players here and the club is going through a bit of a transitional period.

"I think the manager needed more time to get the most out of the players last season. He only had them on Tuesday and Thursday nights between 7pm and 8.30pm and we were competing against 11 or 12 full-time teams. Everything has improved fitness and discipline-wise now.

"The play-off final was a great occasion for the lads which they thoroughly enjoyed but to be so close to achieving League football for Aldershot and then so far was massively disappointing. After 42 games and two play-off matches we were 90 minutes away so it was a huge blow not to go up but we had three days in the sun together in Majorca afterwards and are still hungry for success."

Aldershot completed their pre-season programme with a shock defeat against Conference South side Lewes last weekend but Warburton pointed out that the Recreation Ground supporters are still looking forward to a successful 2004/2005 campaign.

He said: "The expectancy at Aldershot last year was for a mid-table finish. Now, after doing so well, the fans think we should do even better and, if everybody stays fit, we could have a great chance.

"Pre-season has been tough and the results have not been particularly good but we have got through unscathed injury-wise.

"We got a bit of a reality check last Saturday when we lost to Lewes but pre-season is just about getting five or six weeks of good work in before the start of the new season."

Updated: 11:36 Friday, August 13, 2004