Michael Duff sends message to Huddersfield Town stars ahead of FA Cup trip to Tamworth

Huddersfield Town head coach Michael Duff has called on his side to put in a “professional performance” in order to progress through their FA Cup first-round tie at Tamworth.

The Terriers take on their National League opponents at the Lamb Ground tomorrow night in a 7.45pm kick-off, with the game being shown on BBC Two.

Tonight’s hosts have been on an upward trajectory in recent times, with Andy Peaks’ side securing back-to-back league titles over the past two seasons. Duff is wary of a potential upset, leaving the head coach focused on securing a place in the next round above all else.

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“It’s a classic FA Cup tie. It’s a small non-league club, who have been on a brilliant journey themselves in the last couple of years,” said Duff.

“You look at what Wrexham have done, Tamworth haven’t had the same headlines but they’ve done the same sort of jump.

“It’s a tiny little ground where the fans can literally touch you. It’ll be full, a surface that we’re never used to playing or training on (3G pitch), albeit we have trained on it today and we will do tomorrow in preparation.

“In terms of our players having to deal with it, you can turn your nose up at it, because the club hasn’t had to play in the first round of the FA Cup for a while, but there’s a reason why all the BBC cameras are there.

“At this stage of the competition, we are a plum tie. You’re probably looking at ourselves, Birmingham, Bolton, Wrexham, we’ll be in the top four or five teams of what non-league clubs want.

“They’ll have been buzzing to get us at home, because they’ll think there’s an upset. We have to go there, be professional, go about our job and just make sure we’re in the next round of the hat, that’s all we need to make sure we do.

“It definitely won’t be a case of players looking around going ‘oh well he’s rested him and him, so he’s taking it lightly’, that’s far from the case. We definitely don’t want to be in the headlines on Sunday or Monday morning, we’re quite happy to hopefully [put in a] professional performance, get through the game, get no credit and move on.”

Town head into the game off the back of a recent upturn in form, with the Terriers having won four and drawn one of their last five matches. Having lost seven out of the eight matches prior to that turnaround, Duff has been pleased with how his side have dealt with challenging moments in recent games to come away with improved results.

“The main thing that we’ve been working on during that period of time was resilience and mentality, and sticking to the process type thinking, rather than going into them and saying ‘oh it’s becoming a team of individuals’,” he said.

“During this run, it hasn’t all gone our own way, and we have shown moments when things have gone against us, we’ve stuck together and we’ve stuck to how we want it to look. The biggest part of that run was trying to get them to replicate what they do on the training pitch on the match pitch.

“Probably the most obvious and pleasing part of that was the Wrexham [game], in the first half an hour, we weren’t particularly good, but we didn’t go under, we came through it and got stronger, which is something that we haven’t managed to do.

“Even the Bristol Rovers game, they score a goal but we see the game out comfortably, whereas maybe earlier in the season, we win the game but we look a little bit more edgy. They’ve stuck together, the attitude of the players has never been in question.

“They weren’t downing tools, it’s just a built-in habit of a team not used to winning or coming through adversity, which we’re still working on, but they’ve shown some positive signs since that run.”