THIS will be the fourth time at the promotion well for Eoin Toal - but the club skipper has a good feeling that this group of Wanderers can succeed where others have failed.

Fresh faced and new to English football in 2023, he was part of the exciting team boosted by Premier League talents James Trafford and Conor Bradley that fell short over two legs against Barnsley in the play-off semis.

And then the following season he was virtually ever-present in a run that promised automatic promotion but ultimately delivered pain at Wembley against Oxford United.

Last season arrived as a reset, both for a team now under new management and the player himself, who had played virtually non-stop for three years and was starting to feel the physical effects.

Made club captain by Steven Schumacher this summer, Toal has come a long way from the shy young centre-half who first appeared from Derry City, and there is a steely determination in his voice as he talks about getting this season's promotion chase just right.

"It still feels sore talking about it, to be honest," said the 26-year-old, who has now made well beyond 100 appearances for Wanderers. "When you look back at that first season we had two top quality loan players in Traff and Connor who were playing in the Premier League straight after that, that's how good they were.

"The Oxford game, it's still touchy. You miss those two but I thought we were in a better position during the season to go up. We had only just snuck into the play-offs the year before, it wasn't expected quite as much but the pressure was on us all season.

"It is different this year. Obviously, it's a different manager, a different formation, but we're building something. We have wingers, so as a centre-back when you have got the ball you can hit either side, and as you've seen, we go to the end. We work really hard for each other, and that has been a big thing."

Fitness is a topic Toal is keen to discuss, now feeling back to his best after a troublesome spell last season where hamstring issues were signalling that he had overdone things since he came to League One.

"Touch wood, everything is going great," he said. "When I'd played in the League of Ireland we played in the summer and I went straight into the off-season here.

"I played that season and then went away with Northern Ireland and I think it just caught up with me.

"But I am feeling good now. Obviously, I haven't played every game and there's a lot of competition. Everyone wants to play but you just have to trust the manager is picking a side to get results."

Toal has also matured since first arriving at Wanderers, now quite comfortable under the media spotlight at a club which is expected to challenge from the front.

"I struggled with all of this moving over here," he said, referring to a pre-match press conference and the presence of the tape recorders and cameras. "It was quite a lot.

"Nobody understood me for the first six months. I was like 'I'm speaking English, lads!'

"I've learned to slow down a bit and enjoy the media side a bit more. It was never as in your face back at home, so you have to get used to it.

"I went straight into a team that was going for promotion, loads of attention, so like anything I think you take some time to get used to things.

"We expect that of ourselves but it's enjoyable pressure."