THE Examiner has been covering Huddersfield Town since their formation in 1908.

We’ve covered thousands of games, taken tens of thousands of photographs and sparked hundreds of thousands of debates.

As times have changed, so has our coverage.

From anonymous reporters who called all the players Mr in stories to today’s coverage which features opinion, analysis and debate, we the Examiner and you, the fans, have always been keen to find out what’s happening to the club.

But we’ve always done it separately – with us, the Examiner, telling you, the fans, what we knew.

Now we’re doing it together – with our new Huddersfield Town fan blog One Upfront.

Written entirely by fans it reflects what you, the people who pay to get through the turnstiles week after week, want to hear about.

Whether it’s ticket prices in the wake of the Sheffield United boycott, whether the Academy earns its keep or simply the ups and downs of being a Town fan, then our four authors (all loyal fans) have got it covered.

To read the posts just go to www.examiner.co.uk/htafc and look for the One Upfront blog section – it’s next to the latest Huddersfield Town news section.

Here is the latest post from Gareth Jackson, also known as @marco4j on Twitter, an exiled Kilner Banker, with a lifelong interest in statistics, now working in Medway, Kent.

His first Town memory is scoring a penalty against Lee Martin at an open day and he ranks Nat Brown, Danny Schofield and Steve Harper his favourite players.

IN 1999, Huddersfield Town were granted Academy status, something that is now held by 40 clubs across the country.

Since that date, a number of first-team players have come through the Academy under the stewardship of first Gerry Murphy and now Graham Mitchell.

We’re told the academy costs £500,000 a year to maintain, which works out at £12m so far – to me, a significant outlay for a Third Division team.

I want to know if we’re getting value for money.

The easiest way to do that would be to see how much we’ve made from selling academy products (Jon Stead, most notably) and I’ll come to that later.

This post, though, is going to look at how much we’ve got out of Academy players while they were at the club, and whether there’s anything we can take from that.

My initial thoughts are that, effectively, the higher the club has been, the less ‘need’ there has been to rely on Academy products.

I’d like to think this wasn’t the case, but I know Lee Clark has been using other teams’ young players (Danny Drinkwater or Benik Afobe, rather than Chris Atkinson or Jimmy Spencer) although he’s also shown willingness to try players out – Smithies, Hunt and Ridehalgh have all played significant roles under him as Town are upwardly mobile.

I’ve broken Town’s last 16 seasons (accurate up to Stevenage at home) down into minutes played by each ‘set’ of players – of bought players, of loaned players and of youth players – to give us a terminology that can include those like Jon Dyson and Simon Baldry who played a lot of games, but weren’t Academy trained because they were too old.

I ought to add now that I’ve included Andy Booth as a youth player, because he did come through Town’s system, though I accept the argument that he was bought back into the club – I don’t think he’d have come back were he not a Town youth product.

The graph isn’t a million miles away from what I thought, though the drop-off to the present day is worrying, but would have been offset a little by Smithies remaining fit – if he’d played all the games Ian Bennett has this season, the percentage of youth players would be far closer to 20% than the 8.54% of playing minutes that it is.

Now, that shows quite well how much faith Town have put in their Academy players over the years, and there’s plenty of reasons to be excited about some of the other players for the future – Atkinson has been getting rave reviews, Jake Charles made his debut for Wales Under 16s recently – so there’s bright-looking lads coming through, and hopefully they’ll end up being good enough for the first team.

I’ve done another chart to document the maximum and minimum percentages on a game-by-game basis (league only, to balance the old ‘reserves in the JPT’) over the period I looked at, too, and that’s pretty striking in a lot of ways.

Firstly, note how similar 2010-11 is to the Great Escape season of 1997-98, when Jon Dyson was the only mainstay in the team, and Robbie Ryan and Sam Collins filled in the gaps.

Last year was much the same with Alex Smithies being the first choice, and Jack Hunt and Liam Ridehalgh filling the gaps where necessary – I’d like to think Hunt was loaned out last year with the intention of playing first-team football when he got back, which has happened regularly since his return.

It would be nice if the same were true of Ridehalgh, though the purchase of Calum Woods over the summer might suggest otherwise, though he was initially used in the right-back spot.

Competition for places is high now in all positions.

All this discussion is focusing on players who are young which, I guess, is a separate part of the issue.

In years gone by, Dyson, Booth, Baldry and others stuck around at Town for many years, youth players but old heads.

There isn’t the chance or willingness to do that any more. Any young players who would be good enough to get into the first team regularly at any club challenging for promotion would more than likely be snapped up by a ‘bigger’ club – Smithies has been constantly surrounded by these rumours, though he’s been something of a one-man band in that.

If Hunt continues to play, and make waves as he has, I’d expect the grapevine to be rustling by next summer.

That leaves the opposite, though. Baldry averaged 1,039 minutes per season over the seven he was with Town during the period – take out the 2,630 of 2000-01 and it would drop to 775 – which is just over 10 games per season.

Thinking of the players who have moved on recently, James Berrett, I would say, is the most prominent, but there’s Dwayne Mattis, and Nathan and Tom Clarke will probably add to the list, and he averaged 543 minutes per season with Town (701 if you take away his 66-minute debut season).

There’s no way Berrett would have stayed at Town to play, for example, 816, 896 then 807 minutes over the next three seasons of his career.

He went to Carlisle and played 4,874 minutes last season alone – more than any Town player except Peter Clarke. That opportunity would never have been open to him at Huddersfield; the average for Town’s midfielders was 2737 minutes at the most.

That’s the difficult thing to balance for managers – especially managers of teams around the top of divisions.

If players are good enough for League I football (or hopefully, Championship football next season), then if you don’t pick them, they may well move elsewhere to get a better shot.

If you do pick them and they excel, they may well move elsewhere.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume players will simply stay at a club just because they developed there.

By the same token, I’d much rather see Lee Clark turn to players who have come through the Academy than similarly-aged players from other clubs.

For example, with no offence meant to Liam Cooper, who is the only example in the squad at the moment, I find it difficult to think that a Town academy product couldn’t have filled the gap he has – Harrison Blakey, for example?

One other point on this.

If you were building a Town team over the time the Academy has been there, it would be seven purchased players, one loan player and three through the youth system.

An average of three youth players every game for 11 years? Well worth £500,000 in my book.

Here’s the graph of what I found (blue line is bought players, red line is loaned players, green line is youth players), which isn’t a million miles away from what I thought, though the drop-off to the present day is a worrying trend, which might have been offset a little by Smithies remaining fit – if he’d played all the games Ian Bennett has this season, the percentage of youth players would be far closer to 20% than the 8.54% (of playing minutes, that it is).

Now, that shows quite well how much faith Town have put in their academy players over the years, and there’s plenty of reasons to be excited about some of the other players for the future – Atkinson has been getting rave reviews, Jake Charles made his debut for Wales U16s recently – so there’s bright looking lads coming through, and hopefully they’ll end up being good enough for the first team.

I’ve done another chart to document the maximum and minimum percentages on a game-by-game basis (league only, to balance the old ‘reserves in the JPT’) over the period I looked at, too, and that’s pretty striking in a lot of ways.

Firstly, note how similar 2010/11 is to the Great Escape season, when Jon Dyson was the only mainstay in the team, and Robbie Ryan and Sam Collins filled in the gaps. Last year was much the same with Alex Smithies being the first choice, and Jack Hunt and Liam Ridehalgh filling the gaps where necessary – I’d like to think Hunt was loaned out last year with the intention of playing first team football when he got back, which has happened regularly since his return.

It would be nice if the same were true of Ridehalgh, though the purchase of Calum Woods over the summer might suggest otherwise, though he was initially used in the right back spot. Competition for places is high now in all positions.

All this discussion is focusing on players who are young which, I guess, is a separate part of the issue.

In years gone by, Dyson, Booth, Baldry and others stuck around at Town for many years, youth players but old heads.

There isn’t the chance or willingness to do that any more. Any young players who would be good enough to get into the first team regularly at any team challenging for promotion would more than likely be snapped up by a ‘bigger’ club – Smithies has been constantly surrounded by these rumours, though he’s been something of a one-man band in that.

If Hunt continues to play, and make waves as he has, I’d expect the grapevine to be rustling by next summer.

That leaves the opposite, though. Baldry averaged 1039 minutes per season over the seven he was with Town during the period – take out the 2630 of 2000/01 and it would drop to 775 – which is just over 10 games per season.

Thinking of the players who have moved on recently, James Berrett, I would say, is the most prominent, but there’s Dwayne Mattis, and Nathan and Tom Clarke will probably add to the list, and he averaged 543 minutes per season with Town (701 if you take away his 66-minute debut season).

There’s no way Berrett would have stayed at Town to play, for example, 816, 896 then 807 minutes over the next three seasons of his career. He went to Carlisle and played 4874 minutes last season alone – more than any Town player except Peter Clarke. That opportunity would never have been open to him at Huddersfield; the average for Town’s midfielders was 2737 minutes at the most.

That’s the difficult thing to balance for managers – especially managers of teams around the top of divisions.

If players are good enough for League I football (or hopefully, Championship football next season), then if you don’t pick them, they may well move elsewhere to get a better shot.

If you do pick them and they excel, they may well move elsewhere.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume players will simply stay at a club just because they developed there. By the same token, I’d much rather see Lee Clark turn to players who have come through the academy than similarly-aged players from other clubs; for example, with no offence meant to Liam Cooper, who is the only example in the squad today, I find it difficult to think that a Town academy product couldn’t have filled the gap he has – Harrison Blakey, for example?

One other point on this.

If you were building a Town team over the time the academy has been there, it would be seven purchased players, 1 loan player and three through the youth system.

An average of three youth players every game for 11 years? Well worth £500,000 in my book.

Click here to go to One Upfront.