"I know the demands that'll be on us" - Former Town midfielder Sam Walker on returning to Halifax as assistant manager

Sam Walker spent a single, eventful season at The Shay as a player during the 2015-16 season, playing under three different managers, being relegated and winning the FA Trophy at Wembley.

Now he is back at the club as assistant manager, a role he has previously held alongside Lakeland at Curzon Ashton and King's Lynn.

"We're very like-minded, we're very similar when it comes to the non-negotiables we want from players and the team," Walker told the Courier.

"The time we spent at King's Lynn, the amount of time we spent together in the car, staying down there, the relationship that was already strong just accelerated to a real bond.

"We're big on trust and loyalty, which goes hand-in-hand with us as people.

"We're both winners, we're both desperate to win, and both very driven.

"We want to test ourselves and see how far we can go, see what our ceiling is.

"We're confident, we back ourselves, individually and as a duo."

Walker and Lakeland have known each other for more than a decade and first worked together when Walker was captain at Curzon Ashton and Lakeland arrived as first-team coach.

"I could see straight away that he was a very gifted coach on the grass, and immediately the buy-in he got from the players because they respected his sessions and the detail he put into them."

During Lakeland's second spell at Curzon, this time as manager, he gave Walker his first coaching role as assistant manager.

"I'd signed at Macclesfield, then joined Adam at Farsley but then got a really bad facial injury so I had to have surgery," Walker said.

"He took the job at Curzon while I was recovering, and asked me to go with him as his assistant, which I did at the end of that season.

"I've always known there's been a calling there for me (in coaching), the type of person I am, the way I've always played the game, very much a student of it, always a bit of a deep thinker about it.

"Other people said to me 'you're going to go down that route'. It wasn't something I paid too much attention to when I was playing but creeping towards my late thirties, I knew it would be my pathway.

"I'd be taking more of an interest in the sessions I'd be taking part in, thinking about the managers I played under, their strengths, taking away the positive things they'd done.

"I knew coaching and management was going to be something I'd explore."

Walker says the fact he has played for Halifax will help the duo.

"I know the lay of the land, I know the demands that'll be on us," he said.

"It's something we'll never shirk.

"It does help, going into familiar surroundings.

"Knowing the chairman from before, I know how he likes to work.

"I know the fans are demanding, and rightly so, because they want to see their club do well, as do we.

"It does help that I have an idea of what environment we're going into."

Walker is passionate about the kind of Town team he wants to help create.

"We'll always be organised, we'll always be hard working, we'll play with a tempo and an energy," he said.

"I don't like our teams, when we're in possession, to be passive and laboured, I like the ball being moved quickly.

"I hope we've got plenty of dynamic players at the top end of the pitch, with pace and power.

"I love seeing players that excite me, that get me on the edge of my seat when I'm watching a game, that embrace the one v one duels at the top end of the pitch.

"And we want players to be ruthless at that end of the pitch, to take advantage of opportunities.

"But hard working and organised will be a given.

"I want our team to be exciting, I want the fans to come and be excited by the way we play, and hopefully that'll be reflected in our recruitment, to supplement the players we already have."

Walker says he and Lakeland like their players to be able to switch seamlessly between three main formations.

"So that, if we need to make a switch in games, it's second nature to them," he said.

"That obviously comes with the amount of hard work we'll do on the training pitch in those formations.

"We played with a 3-5-2, we played with a 4-2-3-1, we played with a 4-3-3.

"Any team of ours, it's important to be adaptable, rather than being stuck in a rigid formation, we like to be adaptable for the different oppositions we can come across, or if we have to make changes in games.

"There's not a set one, but we do like to be adaptable to different formations we will use."

On how he and Lakeland will work and what responsibilities they will have off-the-pitch, Walker said: "We both like to look at the opposition, and then we like to come together and compare notes, because there might be something I might not have seen but he's seen, or vice versa.

"On the training ground, we'll talk a lot, we'll both pitch ideas to each other.

"We try and split the coaching as much as we can.

"There's strengths I have that I'll utilise and there's strengths in the details Adam puts across with what he wants day-to-day.

"It's not really 'you look after one thing, I'll look after the other', it's just working in tandem with each other."

And Walker says an important part of working together will be disagreeing with each other and challenge the other's opinion.

"You've got to believe in what you're saying, and we have the relationship where we do challenge each other," he said.

"We're always receptive to that, and I think that's healthy.

"In certain scenarios, if you feel strongly about something, you've got to push and believe in what you're saying, have that conviction and back yourself and your ideas.

"It's no good just going along with it, and then if a certain scenario crops up, thinking 'I wish I'd said something or challenge it a bit more'.

"You're just redundant in the role then. Anybody can get someone who just goes along with everything.

"But we do challenge each other."

While Walker ackonwledges the good work done under Chris Millington and Andy Cooper, he wants to try and take that onto the next level.

"I think if we got into the play-offs again and we could surpass the great work that Milly and Coops did, it would be a very good season," he said.

"We're both desperate to win, that's why we're involved, that's why you make so many sacrifices, it's to win as many games as possible and get as close to the top as possible.

"There's been a lot of good work over the last six years, with Pete and Chris before us, and we want to carry that baton now, and push as much as we can to get a little bit further and a little bit closer to that promotion spot.

"We're ambitious, we'd love nothing more than to take the club towards League Two.

"So if we can push a little bit further than we have in the last couple of years, I think that'd be a good season."

But doing so will be far from straightforward, given Town's financial constraints in a hugely competitive National League.

"We've just got to maximise what we have as best as we can," he said..

"That comes down to the players we're able to recruit, which we're already working hard on, to identify targets that will be able to fit into our wage structure and give us the best value for money.

"We've worked with lower-end budgets before but we've been creative, and still signed good players

"It's nothing that fazes us. It's part of the process for us and we understand we're just going to have to work a little bit harder on the recruitment front to find the players who are going to be really great value for us."