Hibernian were “outstanding to a man”, said head coach David Gray, as Jamie McGrath’s debut goal helped them to a creditable first-leg draw against Midtjylland in Denmark.<\/p>\n
Gray’s men stunned the hosts with an early opener in the Europa League second-round qualifying tie as Republic of Ireland midfielder McGrath’s free-kick from wide left caught out goalkeeper Jonas Lossl and crept into the net.<\/p>\n
Despite a shaky start, Danish Superliga runners-up Midtjylland grew into the game and had two close-range efforts – Adam Buksa watched his header float on to the roof of Jordan Smith’s net and Franculino Dju smashed over. <\/p>\n
Gray’s side continued to exploit Midtjylland’s defensive frailties and Kieron Bowie had a chance to double their advantage when he latched on to a poor clearance, but his effort was blocked. <\/p>\n
Martin Boyle did have the ball in the net for Hibs shortly before the interval but had strayed marginally offside. <\/p>\n
Midtjylland piled on the pressure in the second half and, despite some nervy moments, Hibs held onto their narrow advantage. <\/p>\n
That was until Jack Iredale gave away a free-kick just outside the box. Aral Simsir stepped up and rifled the ball into the top corner to draw the hosts level. <\/p>\n
“The challenge was always to keep the tie alive and give us something to build on,” ray told BBC Scotland.<\/p>\n
“With the level of performance, I am delighted for the players. But it is only half the job. We knew that. But I want the players to take confidence from this because we matched a Champions League team from last season.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hibernian were “outstanding to a man”, said head coach David Gray, as Jamie McGrath’s debut goal helped them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-34850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}