Football can be cruel. Oh so cruel. With everything that has surrounded Middlesbrough this season, from the appointment and then swift departure of Rob Edwards, to the relatively unknown Kim Hellberg taking the wheel, to missing out on the automatic promotion places, to ‘spygate’ and being reinstated in the Play-Off Final, winning at Wembley to secure their return to the Premier League would have felt right. But it was not to be.
Before Saturday’s Play-Off Final, Boro had never won at the home of football, a record that was devastatingly maintained after 100 minutes of football in the sweltering heat of London. Their only major trophy, the 2003/04 League Cup, was at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, with the new Wembley still under construction.
Watching on in the stands was Steve Gibson, Boro’s owner, who had led their claim to be reinstated in the Play-Offs after Southampton intern analyst, William Salt was spotted spying on the Teessiders’ training session. His passion for his club, along with all of those in red in the stands created a cauldron inside of Wembley. But it was not enough.
Ollie McBurnie’s 95th minute strike came as a result of Middlesbrough goalkeeper Sol Brynn, trying, but ultimately failing, to push away a cross. The ball instead fell to McBurnie, who could not miss. The net rippling naturally brought about an outpouring of noise from the Hull City end, and yet, from the Boro fans, there was a wave of silence, which was louder still.
Kim Hellberg said that football “is a game of small margins”, and he was right. His side had been the better of the two for the majority of the match, but the game followed a narrative which had shaped Boro’s season - plenty of possession but nothing to show for it.
“We are not good enough creating big chances from our chances and I think we have a lot of those moments where we are driving the game forward but don’t use those chances good enough to create those big chances”, Hellberg said.
Hull meanwhile, were happy to concede the ball, and struck when it mattered. “That is football”, Hellberg made clear, and there is only one statistic that truly matters.
There was a nervous excitement oozing out of Boro supporters on Wembley Way. Inside the stadium, their players had the better of a largely uneventful first half, although it was a slow game given the sweltering heat in the capital. Kim Hellberg’s side sustained good amounts of pressure in the Hull final third, but their delivery was lacking each time.
The best chances in the first period both came right at the end. Hull’s Ollie McBurnie crashed a header off the crossbar, before David Strelec of Boro steered a low shot just wide of the upright minutes later.
The second period did not see the tempo increase, although the tension did. A strange phenomenon grew in which neither side really looked like scoring and yet it felt like the game was on a knife edge. Could anyone take a game that was destined for extra time by the scruff of the neck?
Middlesbrough hoped it would be Hayden Hackney. He had missed both legs of the semi-final against Southampton through injury but he sat on the bench at Wembley waiting to enter the action. The Redcar-born lad entered the pitch with 20 minutes to go, and was met by a roar as if he were a gladiator walking out into the arena.
He showed flashes of why he was named Championship Player of the Season, but given his lack of match fitness he was unable to impact the game in the way he would have wanted.
Therefore, instead of Hackney it was McBurnie, who had been on the pitch from minute one, who determined the outcome. The striker snubbed by Scotland for this summer’s World Cup left his mark at Wembley, and left the red wall of Middlesbrough desolate and downtrodden.
Next season will mark Middlesbrough’s tenth without Premier League football. For all of the battles won in the boardroom of late, they now must win on the pitch. “Small margins”, as Hellberg put it, must now go in their favour.
