{"id":12061,"date":"2026-05-23T23:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=12061"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:23:18","slug":"oli-mcburnie-sends-hull-city-back-to-the-premier-league-late-goal-seals-narrow-win-in-championship-play-off-final-as-sergej-jakirovics-team-overcome-middlesbrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=12061","title":{"rendered":"Oli McBurnie sends Hull City back to the Premier League! Late goal seals narrow win in Championship play-off final as Sergej Jakirovic’s team overcome Middlesbrough"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Hull City’s path to the Premier League has been built on defensive solidity. They reached the top flight without conceding a single goal across both legs of the semi-finals and the Wembley showpiece. Furthermore, they become the first team since Cardiff City in 2010 to earn promotion after finishing the regular season in sixth place.<\/p>\n

Jakirovic’s tactical approach was validated by the result, even if they ceded control of the ball for long periods. Speaking after the final whistle, the match-winner reflected on the nature of the win. “For the first time ever, I think I’m speechless. It has been a long hard season and I think that games sums up. I don’t think we’ve won a game when having more possession. I just felt like today it was written for me,” McBurnie said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hull City’s path to the Premier League has been built on defensive solidity. They reached…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}