By Callum Hansey

Former Halstead Cricket Club captain Phil Toogood is back at Star Stile and is looking to pass on his experience to the current crop of players.

Toogood helped oversee some of Halstead’s most successful years while playing as skipper and he has already been having an impact at the first-team’s pre-season training day last wekeend.

“Spirit and attitude come before technique – that will get you over the line,” he told the squad ahead of their season’s opener against Worlington tomorrow and they are words that the young team will need to heed as they return to the top flight of the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship.

Toogood is back at Star Stile, after seven years away from the game, in an advisory role to incumbent club captain Josh Wells.

The former skipper feels that he has “something to offer” Wells off the pitch as he seeks to reinvigorate the competitive spirit at the club that made Halstead the formidable presence it was.

What started off as a throwaway comment about helping Wells from a fellow spectator escalated into a return after discussions with chairman Mark Surridge and president Stuart Berger.

But it was a talk with the former club president Peter Rawlinson that galvanised the return.

Before his death last year, Rawlinson said to Toogood that he was delighted that he may be coming back as it had been the former president who had taken a 22-year-old Toogood under his wing when the latter joined the club and they developed a close friendship.