By Peter Lodge
July 9 2002

Nineteen-year old defender Nathan Clarke will miss the start of the season due to a knee injury. Town's young defender Nathan Clarke will miss the start of the 2002/03 season with knee injury problems.

Clarke saw a specialist on Monday and is due an operation on Tuesday. This will hopefully sort out the problem.

"Nathan began complaining of knee problems after training on Saturday," Terriers boss Mick Wadsworth told the club's official website.

"As you might expect, we have intensified the training recently and Nathan has been feeling strain a bit because of that.

"The problem had not been spotted before because of the level of training we are at now. You have to take each level of training one at a time and it would have been virtually impossible to identify Nathan's injury before now.

"This is a real blow to us and I am hugely disappointed. I know what a bright prospect young Nathan is and I was looking forward to working with him in the run-up to the season.

However, Nathan has a very bright future and our priority now is to heal that injury as soon as possible."