John Egan: Hull had been written off

Hull City's John Egan celebrates with the trophy after winning promotion to the Premier League following the Sky Bet Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough at Wembley Stadium, London. Picture: Adam Davy/PA Wire. 

Ireland veteran John Egan hailed a dressing room that has been there and done it for taking 'written off' Hull City back to the Premier League.

Hull emerged from the chaos of the Championship play-offs to beat Middlesbrough 1-0 in the ‘Spygate’ final at Wembley.

Oli McBurnie scored a £200million tap-in in stoppage time to fire the Tigers back to the top flight after nine years.

McBurnie’s goal meant heartbreak for Middlesbrough, the side who came in from the cold after Southampton were thrown out of the play-offs for spying on them.

It also avoided the threat of litigation, this time from Hull, whose owner Acun Ilicali vowed to take legal action if his side were not promoted.

His contention was that Hull should have gone up automatically when Saints were expelled, rather than face the team who had lost the semi-finals.

In the end a jubilant Ilicali was offering his players a trip to Las Vegas after McBurnie settled the matter by scoring their third Championship play-off final winner, emulating the Dean Windass-inspired side of 2008 and Mohamed Diame’s class of 2016.

Egan said: “Everybody was writing us off but I thought we had a lot of lads who had either been promoted, played in the Premier League or played top-end Championship football.

“There are a lot of ups and downs, but I think what helped us this year was the amount of experience we had last summer."

Hull were given a transfer embargo last summer, due to late payments to other clubs, confining them to free transfers and loans.  

“The transfer embargo was tough on the club, but it probably helped us," Egan reasoned. 

“We had to sign more experienced players. The togetherness has been huge. We’re so close as a team.

“When you’re in dressing rooms like that, it’s special, everyone loves coming into training.

“We all love each other’s company. We love going on away trips together. And I think we showed on the pitch.

“We dug deep on Saturday. Middlesbrough had a lot of the ball, we knew they would. But we always knew we’d get a chance.”