Town should be proud of role in rise of Three Lions
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TERRIERS fans have expressed their delight at seeing former loanee Emile Smith Rowe earn his first caps and first goal for England this week.
The Arsenal youngster was one of three former Huddersfield Town players on the pitch alongside Ben Chilwell and Conor Coady in the second half of England’s demolition of San Marino.
The Chelsea left-back came on loan from Leicester City as David Wagner’s first signing in 2015, a few months after Coady had been transferred to Wolves.
A permanent signing rather than a loanee, few would have predicted in Coady’s single season as a decent central midfielder at the John Smith’s Stadium that he would go on to become an established
Premier League centre-back and full international.
Of course, alongside the expressions of pride there has been a backlash against those who find excessive enjoyment in those players’ progression to the highest echelons of the game.
Smith Rowe only played 19 games for Town, they might point out, and for as much as it was his goal against West Brom that kept the club in the Championship, he had a few more quiet games than some would care to remember.
It’s true there is a bit of overstatement and hyperbole out there, as ever on social media. But as much as some may wish to point out their his and Chilwell’s contribution to Town history, and the limited contribution of the Terriers to their development, an awful lot more fans besides feel a kinship with those players. Every young Premier League loanee arrives with promises of the moon on a stick, but precious few of them actually go on to fulfil that potential - just look at Izzy Brown, Kasey Palmer, Diego Poyet, or Reece James (the one now at Blackpool, not the one at Chelsea).
On top of that, Town’s own academy does not have a rich recent history of developing future England stars.
If anyone has any advance on Trevor Cherry on the last academy graduate to go on to earn a full England cap, back in 1976, get in touch.
Supporting those players who may have had only short spells at the club having been produced elsewhere is better than nothing.
Besides which, the brevity of a player’s spell does not necessarily mean it is insignificant to their development.
Here’s Chilwell in February 2021, talking about his brief spell at Town under Wagner: “He walked me into the dressing room and that was my first experience of being in a dressing room with senior players where everything is about winning.
“Huddersfield was a very big step in my career in going from under-23s football, where it’s all about improving as a player, to going into a men’s dressing room where it’s all about winning and you’re seeing that it’s not just for fun.”
Or, to look away from Town for a moment, here’s former England captain John Terry in his retirement message on Instagram in 2018: “My club career and heart will always belong to Chelsea, but I am grateful for my loan spell at Nottingham Forest in 1999, which was invaluable for my development as a young player.”
Lewis O’Brien has talked in similar terms about his one-year loan spell at Bradford City, despite them getting relegated out of League One that season.
Ask any player, in fact, and they’ll tell you playing regular competitive football for the first time is the most formative time of their career.
If it hadn’t been Huddersfield Town for Smith Rowe, it would have been somewhere else, but it wasn’t, and it’s fair enough that people would want to take pride in that – even if that pride causes some to blow things a tad out of proportion. That’s football fandom for you.
There are two more former Town loanees who, in time, may well go on to wear the Three Lions at senior level.
Trevoh Chalobah has started to
Huddersfield was a very big step in my career in going from under-23 football