Hull City gave their supporters a Sunday afternoon to remember
Barry is the Hull City correspondent, and previously covered Nottingham Forest for the Nottingham Post/Nottinghamshire Live. Barry has reported on Hull City’s League One title success and Championship campaigns
There was a buzz around the MKM Stadium on Sunday afternoon which became a crescendo of noise by the time Oliver McBurnie slammed in a 93rd minute-winner against Oxford United.
In truth, it was a game City should have won by a greater margin. The Tigers should have gone into seven minutes of added time with a commanding lead, the job well done and three points already in the bag.
While that would have been a comfortable ending, it wouldn’t have provided the theatrical drama that ensued when McBurnie took a step back after receiving Ryan Giles’ clever pass, before guiding the shot into the bottom corner of Jamie Cumming’s net.
Unbridled joy at the MKM Stadium then ensued. This football club never does things the easy way.
There haven’t been many of those moments in the recent past, but so early in the season, in the first home outing of the campaign, it could give Sergej Jakirovic the lift-off his tenure deserves.
It’s easy to rewrite history and suggest there’s been nothing quite like that for a while, but there have been special moments over the last couple of years, and they’ve been fleeting. The 3-3 draw with Leeds springs to mind, as do home draws with Leicester City and Ipswich Town the campaign before, and the late win over Huddersfield Town.
Perhaps recency bias comes to the fore here, but that felt a bit different. Maybe it’s because of the recent struggles, the desperate home form last term has left significant scars, so to come through a game like that and win will have made a mark.
In the hours since the game finished, so many fans have mentioned how refreshing it was to see a City side play on the front foot and excite those on the terraces. The fans responded to what they were seeing on the pitch.
What Jakirovic is doing is not rocket science. It’s fairly simple and straightforward, almost uncomplicated. Players are playing in normal positions, given the freedom to express themselves and try to score goals.; they’re enjoying themselves and it’s obvious, the celebrations said it all. Nothing sensational, but football has lost that simplicity over the past few years.
Jakirovic has sought to simplify things, and long may it continue. Who knows how this season will play out. We’re only two league games into it, but the signs throughout pre-season and in the first week of the new campaign are wholly positive, and if nothing else, after a desperate year, it’s given City fans something to grab hold of, a reason to believe in their football club again.
Even the news that the club’s appeal outcome wasn’t what they’d hoped for hasn’t seemed to dampen the excitment. If anything, it’s galvanised the supporters to get behind Jakirovic and the players, and that collective momentum can be a useful thing.
Football waits for nobody, so the challenge now is to ensure the visit of Blackburn Rovers on Saturday lunchtime is not a damp squib – the classic after the Lord Mayor’s Show event. The city must deliver performances and wins with regularity, and if that happens, those supporters will surely start to believe.
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