MATT Targett believes Saints’ decision to enter the Checkatrade Trophy will offer a unique opportunity for the club’s academy youngsters to flavour facing “physical” Football League players as they prepare for their opening match at Charlton tonight.

The 20-year-old left-back is himself a product of the famed Staplewood youth programme and he can see the benefits of Saints’ current crop getting the chance to face League One and Two opposition in the revamped competition, which was formerly known as the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.

For the first time this season, clubs with Category One academy teams have been invited to enter the competition alongside 48 first teams from the third and fourth tiers.

Saints begin their first sortie into the tournament since winning it in 2009/10 with a trip to League One Charlton tonight in their opening regional group stage game in Southern Group E, which also includes League Two’s Crawley Town and Colchester United.

Under the competition’s rules, the invited academy teams must include at least six players aged under-21 as of June 30, 2016.

“I think it’s important for these players to flavour what League One or Two is like,” said Targett, who broke through to the Saints first team in 2014. “Playing against first team players that are physical will be a good test.

“Everyone’s going to enjoy it and learn from it.”

Many of Staplewood’s starlets get their first taste of the rigours of the Football League while on loan from St Mary’s, but the competition offers for the first time a chance to blood youth against senior players in a competitive match without shipping them out elsewhere.

Yet, there may well also be, with Claude Puel’s side now on an international break, a chance for some senior players to get some much-needed game time, with five of the starting side at Charlton allowed to be over the age of 21.

The last time Saints entered the Checkatrade Trophy, then under its previous moniker as the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, Alan Pardew’s outfit memorably took the crown with a 4-1 thrashing of Carlisle at Wembley in the final in 2010.

Saints join fellow Premier League sides Everton, Stoke City, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Leicester City, Swansea City, Chelsea, West Ham and West Bromwich Albion in the competition this term.

The top two teams from each group will progress to the knockout stage of the competition.