Two years after joining Team Sky, Nathan Earle is heading home to race for the Pro Continental Drapac team. The 27 tear old doesn’t see it as a negative move despite moving down a level, and believes it may be just what his career needs.

“As time went on, I saw that there were a lot of good riders going to Pro Conti teams,” he told CyclingTips.

“For a rider like myself, the role I will get in a smaller team like that will be a much better one and I’ll get a lot more chances with team support and things like that.”

He also fought back at critics who say he doesn’t finish enough races or doesn’t ride to the end often enough.

“I read an article somewhere about my two years with Sky. They mentioned how many DNFs I had, how many races they said I failed to complete. I think for me it was 11 or something like that,” he states.

“Either the team says ‘don’t finish, because you have got another tour where you have to ride the front coming up,’ or ‘you don’t need to finish because you have done that much that we are going to get our result or whatever. You just pull the pin and save yourself.’

He says that he has learned a lot from his role as a domestique for two years at one of the sport’s best teams, working for some of its best riders.

“I was put into quite a heavy domestique role for the whole two years. That is obviously not so good for trying to get results but, at the same time, I guess I learned a lot that way. I also worked with some of the best guys in the sport, which was quite an amazing thing to do.”

“Helping Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins was important. I was part of the team when Bradley won the Tour of California. We did a really good team effort there. I felt like I rode super strong and played a really important role.”

Earle moved on to discuss his new contract with Drapac and what the deal means for him in the long and short term.

“Having an option to ride Pro Conti, live in Australia and still race internationally sounded like a pretty good deal,” he says, talking about the contract his manager Andrew McQuaid secured for him. “I don’t want to lose my marriage over a professional contract or living in Europe.”

“It all fell into place. It was a well-balanced decision with lifestyle…my wife involved and cycling as well. It all just made sense at the time.”

Earle then moved on to discuss his racing goals for the season, where the early Australian races are key to Drapac’s season.

“At the moment I am just focussing on our nationals in January. That is quite important. Obviously now being on an Australian Pro Conti team, having the national jersey in the team would be huge. You are the Australian team but you are racing overseas, so it would be a massive thing to have that.”

“I think that course suits me quite well and I have always done reasonably well there in the past. So that’s my first goal. Then from there I assume that we might be doing the Herald Sun Tour and the Tour Down Under, so hopefully I make those squads. I just want to be at my best for that early January, February part of the year. Hit the ground running there, start on a high and that will keep the confidence going for the year.”