Huddersfield Town urged to grasp promotion opportunity while they can

Tom Lees has urged his younger Huddersfield Town teammates to make the most of the opportunity they have to seize a place in the Championship top six – and perhaps beyond.

The 31-year-old centre-back looks set to make his 400th start in the second tier of English football against Queens Park Rangers in Friday’s 5:30pm kick-off but has never managed to break into the Premier League: he made the play-offs twice with Sheffield Wednesday, but lost in the final against Hull City in 2016 and was knocked out in the semi-finals by David Wagner’s Terriers the following year.

A young Lees did help Bury achieve automatic promotion out of League One when on loan from Leeds United in 2011, though – and as the fourth-oldest member of the current Town squad, he has drawn from that experience to send a message not to get complacent at this critical point of the season by tricking themselves into thinking they’ll get plenty more cracks at the Premier League.

He said: “These things don’t come around every day. You never know when you might get this chance again. When you’re young – you mention I got that promotion with Bury – that was one of my first seasons and I didn’t really think much of it, it’s almost like ‘it’s normal, that’s what happens’.

“But it’s been a long time since my last go in the play-offs and you never know when you’ll get the chance. You might get this chance as a youngster and then never get them again later in your career. People like me and Hoggy, Fraizer, Wardy…we know that these chances are few and far between so you’ve just got to really take it while you have that opportunity.”

Lees added: “I don’t know if I’ll get the chance again – but we’ve not got into [the play-offs] yet, and that’d be a massive step and I