Hull City Triumphs Over Millwall in Playoff Clash

Millwall’s wait goes on. Thirty-four years after they last tasted the top flight, the Lions walked off at The Den with another playoff home leg lost, their curious 100% losing record in such games grimly intact.

They came into this semi-final first leg as the form side – six unbeaten, four wins in that run, and a ground that had started to feel awkward for visitors again. None of that mattered once Hull settled. The Tigers arrived with history on their side, memories of 2008 and 2016 surges still fresh enough to believe in, and they set about Millwall early.

A flurry of corners pinned the hosts back. Most were wasted, but one nearly broke them. Charlie Hughes rose at the far post and guided a header towards the far-left corner, only to watch it dribble wide. Millwall exhaled. With only champions Coventry scoring more away goals in the opening 15 minutes this season than Hull’s seven, the London club were fortunate to still be level.

That escape jolted Millwall into life. The response was sharp, aggressive, more like the snarling side that had charged into the playoffs. Femi Azeez almost flipped the tie two minutes later, driving in from a tight angle on their first real attack of note, his effort flashing across goal.

From there, Millwall took hold of the half. They pressed higher, snapped into tackles, and started to turn Hull towards their own goal. Thierno Ballo embodied that shift. His full-blooded challenge on Kyle Joseph forced the Hull man off with an ankle injury, and moments later the Austrian almost struck himself, sliding in at the back post as a cross from the right skimmed agonisingly beyond his reach.

Hull survived, regrouped and reached the interval level, which suited them far more than it did Alex Neil.

The numbers hanging over Millwall were ugly. Twenty of their 25 home league goals conceded this season had arrived after the break. Within three minutes of the restart, that vulnerability almost surfaced again. Hull sliced through with the kind of crisp passing that had Millwall backpedalling, Regan Slater slipping in Oli McBurnie. The striker drove for the near post, only to be denied by a strong block from Tristan Crama. It was a let-off, and a warning.

The game drifted towards the hour without either side truly seizing it. Neil, chasing only a second win in seven meetings with Hull, chose that moment to shake things up. Among the changes, Alfie Doughty stepped off the bench. The timing could not have gone worse.

Barely a minute later, Hull struck with precision. Matt Crooks split the pitch open with a piercing ball out to Mohamed Belloumi on the right. The Algerian winger squared up his man, glided infield and, with Doughty struggling to get to grips with the tempo, curled a beautiful left-footed shot into the far corner past both the substitute and Anthony Patterson – the same Patterson who stood on the right side of Wembley glory with Sunderland only last year.

The goal rattled Millwall. The Den, so often a weapon, fell into a tense murmur. Hull sensed fragility and almost doubled their lead in ruthless fashion. Barry Bannan, usually the calmest head on the pitch and a playoff winner with Blackpool in 2010 and Sheffield Wednesday in 2023, coughed up possession in no-man’s land to Belloumi. The winger immediately fed Liam Millar, free and in stride, but Jake Cooper read it superbly, throwing himself in front of the shot and deflecting it over the bar.

Cooper’s intervention felt huge at the time. In the end, it changed nothing.

With 12 minutes left, Hull killed the contest and possibly the tie. If Doughty’s introduction had been a nightmare, Joe Gelhardt’s from the Hull bench was the opposite. Again Belloumi was the architect, tormenting Millwall down the right. He drove into space and, with the outside of his boot, whipped an inch-perfect square ball into Gelhardt’s path.

Gelhardt did the rest. One touch, head up, low and true into the bottom-right corner. Patterson got a hand to it but couldn’t keep it out. Hull had their second, their cushion, their statement.

Millwall had no response. The frustration of finishing “best of the rest” in the regular season hardened into something more bitter as the minutes drained away. Another playoff run stalled, another year outside the Premier League, the ghosts of 1990 still unlaid.

Hull walked off with a 2–0 lead and something more intangible: the sense of a club that simply does not recognise playoff failure. They have never been knocked out at this stage of the Championship season. A year on from scrambling to stay in the division on the final day, they now stand one performance away from the “Promised Land”, a Wembley date on 23 May looming large.

Play like this again, with Belloumi – deservedly named Flashscore Man of the Match – at the heart of it, and Hull’s latest playoff chapter might yet end where all the best ones do: under the arch, with promotion on the line and everything to gain.