BRADFORD (Park Avenue) fell to a second pre-season defeat on Friday night, going down 4-0 to a Huddersfield Town B team at Horsfall.

Five trialists started the match for Mark Bower’s side, and the opening quarter proved to be an even contest.

But Huddersfield’s youngsters took the lead midway through the first half, when Lucas Odunston inadvertently headed a cross beyond his own keeper George Sykes-Kenworthy.

Mitch Lund almost equalised instantly, with his effort well saved, but instead Huddersfield soon made it 2-0 through Conor Falls.

Lund then nearly halved the deficit, heading just wide, before Aaron Rowe grabbed a third for the visitors five minutes before the break.

Avenue made four changes at half-time, and started brightly, with Myles La Bastide curling a shot just wide.

Huddersfield then produced some sustained pressure, but the home defence held firm, before Avenue fashioned a couple of half chances themselves.Hudder

Sykes-Kenworthy made a good save from Charles Ondo with 20 minutes to go, but he was powerless to prevent a fourth goal 10 minutes from time, which came courtesy of Will Bapaga.

Town played out the last few minutes with 10 men as Fope Deru limped off injured.

After the game, Avenue boss Bower reflected: “We were playing against a good full-time side, who were very well drilled and good at their patterns, working the ball well.

“I thought we coped well for the first 25 minutes, though I was a bit disappointed with us on the ball.

“It’s horrible to concede an own goal and we should have dealt with that better, and to be fair their second goal, having just watched it back, is about four yards offside, which is ridiculous really.

“Their lad curls in a really good strike for the third, and though we hadn’t created much ourselves in the first half, they’d only had two shots for their three goals, but they punished the mistakes we made.

“I thought we started the second half brightly, with a few decent efforts and we got into better areas.

“We dealt with Huddersfield better than we did in the first half, then obviously as the game goes on you make more changes and it was another mistake at the end for their fourth.”

He added: “It’s more minutes in the legs for the lads, and a couple of them got the full 90.

“We still need a few more bodies in, we’re working on that, as we only started with a few senior players, two or three academy lads and the rest were trialists.

“You could see we were disjointed at times, but it was a good test against good opposition.”