Hull Punish Millwall as Playoff Curse Continues

The numbers never lied. Millwall came into this tie with a perfect – and painful – record of losing every Championship playoff home leg they had ever played. That unwanted streak is still intact, and it now feels heavier than ever.

Hull arrived at The Den with history of a different kind. Playoff winners in 2008 and 2016, they carried the swagger of a club that tends to get this stage right. They also carried form: seven away league goals inside the opening 15 minutes this season, second only to champions Coventry. So when the Tigers flew out of the blocks, Millwall’s early anxiety felt entirely justified.

The visitors forced a flurry of corners, pinning Millwall back and silencing the ground. One of them almost brought the opener, Charlie Hughes glancing a header agonisingly wide of the far post. The ball trickled past the upright, The Den exhaled, and Millwall were spared a familiar early playoff wound.

That escape finally jolted the hosts into life. The Lions began to press higher, bite into tackles, and show some of the intensity that had fuelled their six-game unbeaten run. Within minutes, Femi Azeez drove into the box from a tight angle and let fly on Millwall’s first real surge forward, only just failing to find the breakthrough.

From there, the half belonged to Alex Neil’s side. Thierno Ballo embodied their growing authority, snapping into a challenge that forced Kyle Joseph off with an ankle injury, then almost turning provider and finisher in the same move. A cross from the right flashed across goal, Ballo stretching every sinew, but the decisive touch eluded him by inches.

Hull, so bright early on, suddenly looked second best. The Den, restless at kick-off, began to believe. Yet the ghosts of Millwall’s season hovered in the background. Twenty of the 25 league goals they had conceded at home had come after the interval. This was a team that often frayed when the pressure rose.

Those fears nearly materialised three minutes into the second half. Hull stitched together a slick move, Regan Slater slicing through the lines before sliding in Oli McBurnie. The striker went for the near post, only for Tristan Crama to read it and throw himself in the way. It was a huge block, and for a spell it looked like the sort of moment that might tilt a tight tie.

It didn’t. Instead, it became the prelude to a managerial gamble that backfired almost instantly.

Chasing only his second win in seven attempts against Hull, Neil turned to his bench and introduced Alfie Doughty. The change was meant to sharpen Millwall’s edge. Instead, it exposed them. Barely a minute after coming on, Doughty found himself on the wrong side of the game’s turning point.

Matt Crooks split the pitch with a searing diagonal to Mohamed Belloumi on the right. The Algerian took the ball in stride, cut in off the flank and sized up his moment. With Doughty scrambling and Anthony Patterson – last year’s playoff final hero with Sunderland – set in goal, Belloumi wrapped his left foot around the ball and curled it unerringly into the far corner.

The Den fell flat. Hull, so often ruthless in these situations, had landed the first clean blow.

Millwall wobbled. The next act almost turned the night into a rout. Barry Bannan, twice a playoff winner with Blackpool and Sheffield Wednesday, gifted possession in a dangerous area, rolling the ball straight into no-man’s land. Belloumi pounced and slid in Liam Millar, only for Jake Cooper to rescue his side with a vital deflection that sent the shot over the bar. It kept Millwall alive, but the pattern was clear: Hull smelled weakness and were circling.

Cooper’s intervention felt huge in the moment. Twelve minutes from time, it was rendered meaningless.

By then, Neil had turned again to his bench. Where Doughty’s introduction had gone wrong, Hull’s changes were ruthless. Joe Gelhardt stepped into the contest and immediately found himself on the end of its defining move. Belloumi, tormentor-in-chief on that right flank, collected the ball once more and produced a pass of real class – an outside-of-the-boot, square delivery that sliced through Millwall’s defensive shape.

Gelhardt didn’t rush. He picked his spot, low and true towards the bottom-right corner. Patterson got something on it, but not enough. The ball skipped over the line, Hull’s players peeled away in celebration, and Millwall’s season began to fold in on itself.

There was no grand late surge, no stirring final assault on the Hull goal. The tie drifted away from Millwall in a manner that will sting as much as the scoreline. For all their strong finish to the regular season, for all the noise and hope that greeted kickoff, the Lions once again walked off their own pitch beaten in a playoff home leg.

Their wait for a Premier League return, stretching back to relegation in 1990, goes on. Another year, another near miss. Another reminder of how brutal this division can be to those who fall just short.

Hull’s story runs in the opposite direction. A year removed from scrambling to survive on the final day, they now stride towards Wembley with their playoff record untouched by failure. They have never been knocked out of the Championship playoffs. With Belloumi – deservedly named Flashscore Man of the Match – in this kind of form and a ruthless edge returning at exactly the right time, they head to 23rd May with one simple prospect in front of them: 90 minutes to the Promised Land.