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74 mins: Millwall bring Bannan and Cundle on for De Norre and Ballo. Hull replace Gelhardt with Kieran Dowell at the same time.
71 mins: That’s two interesting things in three minutes. Maybe the tide is turning.
70 mins: And Hirakawa nearly sets up a goal with his first touch! He produces a lovely cross from the left, McBurnie gets on the end of it, and he glances his header across goal and wide.
70 mins: Substitutions! It’s Hirakawa and Joseph on, Millar and Belloumi off for Hull.
69 mins: Millwall have a shot from distance that isn’t terrible! Neghli picks up the ball in midfield, advances, keeps going because nobody tries to stop him, keeps going a bit further, and then hits a low, hard left-footed shot that flies across goal and wide off the outside of the far post.
68 mins: “I love your opening photo of Milwall’s Tony Cascarino facing up to David O’Leary in front of a crowd of … well, just one visible punter!” writes Justin Kavanagh. “It’s like that old joke about the guy who opened an Irish pub on the moon (Jack Charlton certainly would have, had he thought of it) but had to close it after a week. Why? No atmosphere.”
66 mins: So, anyone got any good weekend plans?
63 mins: Crama has perhaps the night’s worst shot, and there have been a lot of bad shots. From a good 35 yards out, he misses the target by at least 25.
60 mins: Nearly a thing! McBurnie gathers the ball on Hull’s right. Millar in the middle has his hands in the air, demanding an early centre. The ball does come in, but Millar a) decides not to shoot; b) tries to backheel flick the ball back to a teammate on the edge of the area but gets it wrong and basically clears it instead; and c) is offside anyway.
58 mins: A lovely ball in from that set piece, but nobody gets on the end of it and it runs out for a throw-in.
57 mins: Belloumi pokes the ball away from Sturge, but then pulls the Millwall full-back back, giving them a free-kick.
54 mins: Millar cuts onto his right foot and curls a cross straight out of play. Half time hasn’t brought an immediate improvement in quality, sadly.
52 mins: De Norre becomes the first name in the referee’s notebook, for grappling with Crooks and bringing him down.
51 mins: Another off-target shot from distance, this time from Hull’s Coyle. It’s a decent effort, nicely hit, but no dice.
49 mins: Egan and Ballo both go for for the same ball, with full commitment, not far outside the Hull penalty area. It’s immediately obvious that one will win the race, the other will concede a free kick. Egan gets to the ball and gets a bit of a kick, but he recovers swiftly enough.
48 mins: Cooper gives the ball away again, but atones by getting in the way of Belloumi. Hull want a free kick, but don’t get one.
46 mins: Peeeeep! The home side get the ball rolling.
The players are back out and almost ready to get the game back under way, with no halftimely substitutions to report.
A bit of half-time reading, in the shape of a Sid Lowe piece about the shambolic and violent end to Real Madrid’s season:
Half time: Hull 0-0 Millwall
45+2 mins: And that’s all for now. The first three minutes were wonderful. Belloumi’s run and shot in the second of those minutes was very much the highlight. Time for a sit-down (or, in my case, a stand-up) and a re-set.
45+1 mins: In fact they flummox everyone by taking it short, work a cross into the box, and Pandur catches it.
45+1 mins: There will only be one minute of stoppage time. Millwall are going to spend some of it chucking another long throw into the box.
44 mins: The great thing about this half is that it is almost over. Millar takes on Leonard on the Hull left, and sprints enthusiastically out of play. Goal kick. “Maybe the lack of visible orange in the crowd can be explained by the fact that tigers rely on their camouflage to remain hidden and mysterious?” ponders Peter Oh.
41 mins: Belloumi goes on a pretty run infield from the right, though the run takes him progressively further away from goal and by the time he ends his run with a shot it has very little chance of going in even if it were to be on target, which it isn’t.
39 mins: Millwall have had eight shots, none on target and all, I think, from outside the area, and five corners, none leading to anything. They’re doing great until they get a sight of goal, at which point they keep making terrible decisions.
38 mins: Ballo now has a shot from outside the area that deflects away for a corner. Azeez is miffed, because he thinks a pass would have been more useful. The corner again comes to nothing.
36 mins: Hull’s Matt Crooks gingerly rubs his right hamstring for a while. But then he stops and plays on. Millwall have another rubbish shot from long range.
34 mins: Again McBurnie has a chance to create a chance for a teammate, but this time his ball to Millar is intercepted. Millar chases down the loose ball and passes into the path of Giles, but from the byline he picks out Patterson, the Millwall goalkeeper.
33 mins: … from which Leonard manages to skittle over two defenders, and Hull have a free kick.
32 mins: Coburn takes down a long pass really nicely, holding off Hughes, turns and carries it towards the area. But this has not so far been a game of clean strikes and goal threats, and his shot deflects wide for another corner.
30 mins: It’s really striking how few orange shirts there are in the crowd tonight. Contrast the background to this photograph, which is pretty representative of the three sides of the ground I can see on the TV coverage …
… with the kind of scenes seen in another two-legged semi-final game earlier this week:
28 mins: McBurnie finds space outside the area, spins and has time to pick out a pass for Millar. But he’s more of a finisher than a creator, and the pass is overhit and runs out of play.
25 mins: A decent cross from Millwall’s left bounces through to Azeez at the far post, who has a complete air kick with his left foot.
22 mins: … which is headed away.
22 mins: Good work from Azeez, who does well to reach a long ball forward ahead of any defender, and then to hit the ball off one of them and behind for a corner.
19 mins: A chance … and a slip! Cooper gives the ball away and a couple of snappy passes send Gelhardt running towards the Millwall penalty area. He cuts inside to open up a shooting chance and then, at the vital moment, falls over. Not at all a dive, just a slip.
17 mins: A glimpse of goal for Hull, as Giles’ cross from the left drops in an ideal spot for McBurnie, but Cooper comes across well to get in the way.
14 mins: And another shot! Azeez this time, from slightly further out, and this one is much more cleanly struck, but no more well aimed. Goal kick.
13 mins: Millwall finally convert some possession into a shot. It’s off the left boot of Ballo, a good 25 yards out, and it is sadly neither well struck nor well aimed. Goal kick.
10 mins: As Sky pointed out before kick-off, both teams tend to do better when they don’t have the majority of possession. So the game is very much going Hull’s way, given that they’ve had just 38.8% of it.
7 mins: Other than that Belloumi run it’s been all Millwall so far, albeit largely them flinging the ball into the Hull penalty area, often from long throws, and Hull defenders heading it back out again.
4 mins: A lovely run from Millwall’s Sturge but it perhaps went on a bit too long. Still, he runs into a defender, goes down and wins a free kick.
2 mins: Hull hit the post! It’s brilliant work from Belloumi on the left, who tricks his way inside one, outside him again, back inside Crama, and then he shoots towards the near post and clips the wrong side of it.
1 min: From kick-off a long ball leads to a long throw, which leads to a corner, which is headed away.
1 min: Peeeep! Millwall get the game started “in their cream strip with navy and mint v-neck”, we’re told.
And now they’re out and huddling. Football imminent!
The players are in the tunnel! Hull’s captain, Lewie Coyle, has a pair of Hull-branded headphones on and is glowering moodily.
“Very much looking forward to the MBM,” writes Jeremy Boyce. Aren’t we all! “But sorry, you are completely wrong. Millwall may have the form, but when it comes to the playoffs the form book goes out of the window. I’m a Leeds fan so I know thing or three about all that. Ironically, the playoffs have brought us back to the basics of footie. On the day(s) it just 11 v 11 (plus 9 subs) and, as in Stingray, anything can happen in the next half hour, plus stoppage time, and eventually penalties. The form book is ripped up and Stranger Things happen. Ask Luton Town. Or Coventry City, who Luton famously beat in a play off final. And who have just found redemption, many years later.” Well, three years. As a Watford fan I have some playoff experience myself (including against Leeds), and our attempts to negotiate them have gone with form every time. Other experiences are available.
Due to spending a fair chunk of this season in far-flung places covering cricket I haven’t seen as much live football this season as usual, but I have seen both of these teams in the flesh, once. I don’t think I saw the best of Hull, who looked a pretty ordinary team with a very good striker for this level in Oli McBurnie, but I thought Millwall were just brilliantly competent and organised. Looking forward to seeing both again tonight, and hoping that the scale of the occasion doesn’t lead to a little negativity creep.
Sergej Jakirovic, the Hull City manager, has a chat:
I think we are very similar teams, it’s 50/50 and we’ll see. Today we have to be very tactically wise. Of course we will try to score and take an advantage into the second leg … Nothing will be decided tonight, but we will try to win the game.
In my opinion, the regular season is over. It doesn’t matter who’s in bigger form. It’s a tournament. We have to be better in two games. No away goals. And we will try to beat Millwall. They have to believe in themselves. We showed already, we played almost all season very good. All season, it’s believe in yourself, try to do what we are practising in training sessions, and I think in the end we deserve to be there because mostly we were there.
It’s been an amazing experience for me. I spoke a lot to Slaven Bilic, he told me everything, but when you feel for yourself it’s amazing. Everyone’s prediction was that we will be in a relegation battle but this is football, and you must believe in yourself.
Alex Neil has had a chat with Sky. It was quite a lengthy chat, and he speaks very quickly, but here’s a taster:
We’re really relaxed. We’re ready. The club’s been trying to get in the playoffs for 24, 25 years and we’ve managed that, so it’s been a brilliant season so far. The first leg, naturally once it’s done, might shape what the second leg looks like, but our aim naturally is to win the first game. For us, we’ve played Hull twice this year, what it did show is both teams are more than capable of beating each other. It’s going to be an end to end game. I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
The owners made it clear to me how he wanted things to evolve. The recruitment’s been brilliant and the lads are absolutely first class. They’re very humble, they’re very hard working and I think if you’ve got a lot of those ingredients, that’s the recipe for success. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve got an unbelievable opportunity and we’ve got to just go for it.
The teams!
Team sheets have been handed in, and these were the names upon them:
Hull: Pandur, Coyle, Egan, Hughes, Giles, Slater, Crooks, Belloumi, Millar, Gelhardt, McBurnie. Subs: Phillips, Hirakawa, Dowell, Lundstram, Joseph, Koumas, Ajayi, Gyabi, McNair.
Millwall: Patterson, Leonard, Crama, Cooper, Sturge, Mazou-Sacko, De Norre, Azeez, Neghli, Ballo, Coburn. Subs: Crocombe, McNamara, Mitchell, Ivanovic, Doughty, Langstaff, Watson, Cundle, Bannan.
Referee: Gavin Ward.
Hello world!
Well, after 46 games the Championship is over. Now for the important bit.
At the end of the regular season Millwall and Hull were separated by precisely 10 points, with the Londoners ending up just a couple away from skipping the playoffs entirely by coming second, and Hull also two away from skipping the playoffs by finishing seventh. That despite Millwall scoring just 64 goals, the fewest in the top eight – and, indeed, not as many as Sheffield United, who finished 13th.
But sure, the playoffs are notoriously about recent form. Here Millwall’s superiority is even more pronounced: three wins and no defeats in their last five put them fourth in the form table, while Hull lost two and won only one of theirs and are 17th. Over the final 10 games of the season Millwall won 18 points, a solid playoff-securing level of achievement, and Hull a midtable 13. Across the entire second half of the season only Southampton – who play the first leg of their playoff semi-final at Middlesbrough tomorrow lunchtime – won more points than Millwall’s 47, while Hull only got 35.
The two games they already played this season aren’t much of a predictive help, both having been won 3-1 by the away team, though Millwall’s victory at the MKM Stadium in March was the more recent by three months (Gavin Ward, who refereed Hull’s win at the Den, is also in charge of this game). So, in short, Millwall could actually be heading for a third season in the top tier of English football, and their first since 1989-90, when they were relegated with a squad that included Teddy Sheringham, Mick McCarthy, Phil Babb and Tony Cascarino.
“We’re in the play-offs with an unbelievable season but there’s still a lot to play for,” their manager, Alex Neil, told BBC Radio London this week. “For this group, what we’ve done, I think we deserve to have something for our efforts come the end of it, not just a pat on the back and a well done. We’re hoping there is still a fairytale ending for us.”
Sergej Jakirovic, the Hull manager, has experience of big two-legged knockout ties from his time with Dinamo Zagreb. “You have to be very clever, or wise, in these games because in the first game, we will not decide anything,” he said. “You have to be better in two games. Who will score more goals or who will concede less, we will see. It’s huge, yes. Who will handle the pressure better? I can say that I can handle pressure better.”
So, a huge match for two teams who have had outstanding seasons. “If you said Millwall would have finished third and we’d have finished sixth at the start of the season, I’m sure people would have laughed at you,” said Hull’s top scorer, Oli McBurnie. But who’ll be laughing after Monday’s second leg?
