Ollie Rathbone spoke of the “really special” atmosphere at the Stok Racecourse after making his first league start for Wrexham.

A crowd of 13,341 – Wrexham’s highest home attendance since 1980 – saw Phil Parkinson’s side go top of the League One table with a 3-0 win over Shrewsbury Town.

“I’ve played quite a lot of games at this level now and atmospheres like that don’t come along very often,” Rathbone said.

“It’s why I came to the club – it’s a special time to be a part of it.”

Wrexham, playing in English football’s third tier for the first time in 19 years following promotion last season, are unbeaten after five games.

But midfielder Rathbone, a summer signing from Rotherham United, is not surprised by Wrexham’s start to the season.

“It can’t be underestimated how big a step up this is but with the squad of players I don’t think you can expect much less to be fair.

“After five league games you have a taste of what the league offers in a lot of different ways and I think we’ve handled everything really well.

“We won’t get ahead of ourselves but we’ve played Bolton away, Peterborough away – two teams that have been in the play-offs the last couple of years – and I think we performed really well against both of them.

“In the home games we’ve done just our job.”