DEVELOPMENT coach Tony Carss says Huddersfield Town Juniors will learn a lot from their excellent FA Youth Cup run this season.
Town went out 3-2 to Nottingham Forest in the fifth round at the City Ground on Tuesday night, needing a late rally to make it tense after a disappointing first-half show.
The team are now preparing to face Coventry City on Saturday in the league, and Carss said: “We’ve praised them for all their efforts and congratulated them for the run and performances they’ve had in the Youth Cup.
“They played very well in the previous two rounds, and we also praised them for the attitude and desire they showed in the second half against Forest.
“We told them it was another opportunity for them and, had they performed as they can do, they would have been in with a good shout of getting into the next round, so the lads are obviously really disappointed.
“But we’ll work with the players, because our season doesn’t stop here.
“We play Coventry on Saturday and, again, it’s all about improving and learning and taking it into the league games, because we want to finish the league really strongly and get as high up as we can.”
Of the Forest match, when Town’s goals came from Duane Holmes, Carss added: “The lads never gave up and kept plugging away, however we were really, really disappointed with the first half.
“We had spoken about how Forest had scored early in the two previous rounds and how important it was to keep things tight. We worked on being nice and bright and unfortunately that went out of the window, for whatever reason.
“Momentum is talked about a lot in football and we certainly handed them that early on by giving them a two-goal lead.
“We scored the goal to get back into the game and we were hoping we could get in at half time on that scoreline and tidied up a few important things, but we switched off again defensively and allowed them to score what was a very avoidable goal.
“That’s young players for you. It’s a learning curve for them, as they have to develop that mentality of being reliable in their role, understand it and be affective with it.
“It can’t take you 20 minutes to start doing the things you should be doing, and that was the way it went the other night, unfortunately, after we’d reached a really high standard in the previous rounds, especially out of possession.”
