Huddersfield Town show vital battling qualities to defeat Nottingham Forest and offer hope of brighter future

If you wanted pretty passing, the John Smith’s Stadium was the wrong place to be. If there was peace on earth on the final Saturday before Christmas, no one told Town or Nottingham Forest.

Gamesmanship was rife, tackles spiteful, the aggravation in the technical areas even greater. Forest had more possession and more shots.

Town’s goals came from two players who rarely find the net, and just as unusually, from set pieces. Only goalkeeper Kamil Grabara’s brilliance kept the damage at their end to one.

These might be valid criticisms after a defeat, but shrugging off all of them and a crippling injury list to secure a vital victory fuelled by team spirit is a huge plus.

This year has been miserable for the club, for the most part more poodles than Terriers, but they are fighting against the tide that looked not too long ago like sweeping them into the third tier. On Saturday, fight was the word.

The clubs fought on the pitch, in the tunnel at half-time and on the touchline at the final whistle.

Even a ball boy got dragged into it, crushed under an electronic advertising hoarding when Tiago Silva barged Jonathan Hogg into touch. The youngster was invited into the home dressing room at full-time to receive the early Christmas presents of a signed ball and the midfielder’s shirt.

Having been at Huddersfield since the summer of 2016, centre-back Schindler – hero of the 2017 play-off final win – knows a thing or two about their mentality, and likes what he sees.

“I think the main difference (with much of 2019) is we play more together as a team,” he said. “It’s almost never a one-against-one situation because we all help each other out.

“We’ve got so many problems with key players out but we still manage to stay in games.”

For the first quarter of Saturday’s match, that was tested.