Jermaine Udumaga said he needs his take his next first-team chance with both hands after making his Football League debut away at Burnley last month.
The 20-year-old was a second-half substitute at Turf Moor in The Bees 1-0 Sky Bet Championship defeat to The Clarets after making his full debut a week earlier in the Capital One Cup defeat to Oxford United.
Now, speaking to Bees Player after featuring for the club’s Under-21s against Cardiff City, Jermaine believes he needs to keep pushing to get a second opportunity at first-team football.
“It has been great for me to get my Football League debut,” said Jermaine. “Now I have to keep pushing on and keep doing as well as possible. Marinus just told me to go and express myself at Burnley. He didn’t give me any rules but he just told me to go and express myself. Apart from my first-touch I really enjoy the experience.
“If I get another chance I have to be ready for it and take it with both hands. When you are sitting on the first-team bench you see a lot of things and it is very different to Under-21s football. When you get onto the pitch it is much quicker and much more intense so you learn a lot.”
Jermaine was speaking after The Bees suffered their first defeat of the season in the Under-21 Professional Development League Two South, away at Cardiff City on Monday evening.
Two goals in the first 16 minutes from Matty Kennedy and Rhys Healy set the Welsh side on their way to a victory that was wrapped up by Healy from the spot with ten minutes to play.
Having taken seven points from their opening three games, scoring eight goals, Jermaine said it was especially disappointing to put in such a poor performances.
“Coming off the back of a good result against QPR and winning 3-0 to come here and lose 3-0 is very disappointing but we just have to move forward now,” said Jermaine. “Today it felt like we were a bit scared in the opening 20 minute and we didn’t really get into it. We started trying to play at 2-0 down but you can’t do that, you have to play right from the go. We needed to be better on the ball. We were a bit sloppy and we weren’t getting into them enough. If we had been more aggressive and organised we would have done better.
“We had to go into the game and show our character to see what we could do. At the beginning of the second-half we tried to play and get going but it didn’t happen. We showed that bit of character but we can’t let that happen again.”
Bees Player subscribers can see the full interview with Jermaine below