{"id":192709,"date":"2025-10-06T04:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T04:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/192709\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T04:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T04:20:14","slug":"club-welcomes-overseas-coach-midland-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/192709\/","title":{"rendered":"Club welcomes overseas coach | Midland Express"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/midlandexpress.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Coach-scaled.jpg\" data-caption=\"Good season ahead: Jacques Du Toit (at left) and Ollie Price are pictured just before Woodend&#039;s first match of the season began on Saturday. Photo: Bill West\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"696\" height=\"458\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Coach-696x458.jpg\"   alt=\"\" title=\"Coach\"\/><\/a>Good season ahead: Jacques Du Toit (at left) and Ollie Price are pictured just before Woodend&#8217;s first match of the season began on Saturday. Photo: Bill West            <\/p>\n<p>Woodend Cricket Club has pulled off a recruiting coup by obtaining the services of an experienced and explosive former First-Class cricketer as a player and coach.<\/p>\n<p>Jacques Du Toit, originally from South Africa, has played a wealth of high-level cricket in England and now brings that knowledge, skill and passion to Woodend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had a lot of offers from clubs around Australia, but ultimately decided on Woodend as our values aligned,\u201d club president Daniel Heaney said.<\/p>\n<p>Du Toit has already fitted in seamlessly at Woodend after arriving last week and shaking off jet lag before playing his first game in the senior side on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>He was pleased to capture three wickets and make 19 not out in the McIntyre Cup 1sts match against Broadford.<\/p>\n<p>This is his first trip to Australia, and he feels he can certainly contribute positively both on and off the field this season. <\/p>\n<p>He said he would have to make an adjustment from turf to hard wickets, and his initial impressions of Woodend were very favourable.<\/p>\n<p>Rugby was his favourite sport as a youngster in South Africa, and he soon became involved in cricket.<\/p>\n<p>His knowledge, skill and passion are big pluses, and he has his own cricket coaching company in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>Heaney said Du Toit would be providing elite coaching to develop the club\u2019s juniors and seniors as the club pushed forward at all levels this season.<\/p>\n<p>He is looking forward to working with senior coach Josh Eastley and new development coach Tim Bannan to deliver a top quality coaching program for all of the club\u2019s senior and junior players.<\/p>\n<p>IMPRESSIVE RECORD<\/p>\n<p>Du Toit\u2019s record as a hard-hitting bat and fast-medium bowler speaks for itself.<\/p>\n<p>He scored four First-Class centuries when playing County Cricket for Leicestershire County Cricket Club. <\/p>\n<p>Playing for Newcastle in the North-East Premier League, Du Toit chalked up moe than 10,000 runs at an average of 47.<\/p>\n<p>In a T20 match last May, he scored 142 not out for Newcastle from just 38 balls!<\/p>\n<p>Woodend has some additional players this season.<\/p>\n<p>Former star junior Oliver Price returns after playing a few seasons with Brunswick and spending summers in the UK playing cricket.<\/p>\n<p>Teenager Ollie Watt, a very talented young cricketer and footballer, has moved from Hanging Rock CC to Woodend hoping to play at the top level in the GDCA this season.<\/p>\n<p>Young brothers Jayben and Kyan Bannan are also in their first season at Woodend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good season ahead: Jacques Du Toit (at left) and Ollie Price are pictured just before Woodend&#8217;s first match&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-192709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}