20-year old defender Tom Clarke has today joined Blue Square National outfit Halifax Town on a month's loan.

The former England under-19 international joins the Shaymen ahead of their game at home to Stafford Rangers on Saturday.

htafc.com caught up with Town boss Andy Ritchie to find out why he thinks the move will be beneficial for the younger Clarke brother.

"Tom needs the competitive games because he's not being tested in the Reserves; the games mean nothing. It will be for a month initially and then we'll take it from there. After he's had some games, it's conceivable that he could come back into the first-team reckoning here."

Tom follows hot on the heels of fellow Terriers defender Shane Killock, who joined Hyde United two weeks ago, and Lucas Akins, who has just returned from a loan spell at Northwich Victoria.

"Obviously Shane (Killock) is out at Hyde United and he has done fantastically well for them in his first two games," Andy continued. "The reports that we have had back from Steve Waywell and Neil Tolson (Hyde's Manager and Assistant Manager) have been very favourable and they had a fantastic win at Vauxhall Motors in midweek.

"We're going to keep Lucas (Akins) here for the foreseeable future as we want to see if the loan spell at Northwich has benefited his football, but if we feel that he warrants another loan spell towards the end of the window then we'll look at it.

"We want to get some of the other younger lads out on loan too. I don't think (Danny) Racchi or Lucas are quite ready for our first-team yet and Luke Malcher has only just recovered from a hernia operation. If it becomes obvious that we can't make the Play-Offs towards the end of the season then we may give a few of them a game to see how they cope."

Tom had to recover from a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament suffered over a year ago for the first part of the season and has only made one substitute appearance for the Terriers in 2008. Given this, he can see the purpose of this loan spell - as he explained to the official club website.

"With my injury, I haven't been able to get as many games as I would have liked," admitted Tom. "The Gaffer has talked to me and told me I need to be playing games and I've been aware of Halifax's interest for a while now. It's on my doorstep, so we'll see how it goes.

"I think they wanted me to train there today but the paperwork didn't get sorted, so I'll train there tomorrow and I'm hoping to be involved on Saturday."

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