Young Terriers demonstrate improvement in training game
- Huddersfield Town Under-17s play i2i Football Academy
- Young Terriers take lessons from training into the game
- Comments from coach Jon Worthington
Huddersfield Town’s Under-17 side continued its progression with a behind-closed-doors game against York-based i2i Academy on Thursday afternoon.
Jon Worthington’s youngsters are still learning the fundamentals having only come together as a group in July but are already showing a great capacity to take lessons from training into game situations.
After an initial focus on fighting intent and defensive work in pre-season, Worthington has more recently begun work on the attacking side of play, as he explained to htafc.com.
“We’ve broken down our style of playing football on the pitch into different phases, and initially we are concentrating on playing out from the back – starting with the goalkeeper.
“Today’s game was like an extended training session for the players. Before the match we gave each player individual objectives to try and achieve, depending on their position; things like breaking opposition lines with passes, or moving off lines to create options for a pass. Collectively we also worked on our rotation in midfield and at full-back.
“We didn’t want the players to focus just on those things, but it was good to get them in their minds as they went out onto the pitch.”
The Young Terriers took those targets onto the 3G pitch at PPG Canalside, knocking five goals past their opponents without reply.
Jon concluded:
“They did really well today; I’m very pleased.
“I’ve already watched the game back and we’ve got so many clips of them doing exactly what we’ve worked on in training sessions.
“They’ve done really well so far, but this is still only the beginning.”
The Under-17s are next in league action when they host Accrington Stanley’s Under-18 side in the EFL Youth Alliance on Saturday 24 August.
