Hull City vs Rotherham United. Sky Bet Championship.
MKM StadiumAttendance23,432.
Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship match between Hull City and Rotherham at the MKM Stadium as Domingos Quina sees red late on but the Millers hold on for a point on Saturday.
Saturday 1 April 2023 18:32, UK
Ten-man Rotherham secured an important point in their quest against relegation with a goalless draw at Hull.
The visitors were handicapped after 79 minutes when substitute Domingos Quina was sent off for a professional foul on the edge of the Millers' penalty box.
But Rotherham boss Matt Taylor will be the happier of the two managers as the hosts - now with one win in nine - never looked cohesive inside the final third until Quina was dismissed.
Before that, a near-sell-out crowd had endured a damp squib of a Yorkshire derby from which neither side deserved to win.
Hull substitute Ozan Tufan struck the crossbar after 63 minutes, but Liam Rosenior's men never gained enough momentum to make it count where it mattered.
Rotherham had lost their last two matches, but they were disciplined at the back and fully warranted parity in a result that keeps them two points above the Sky Bet Championship relegation zone.
A poor first half never got going until Regan Slater, who firstly did well to break up a Rotherham attack in his own penalty area, dragged one just wide of the left post after 15 minutes.
But Hull fans expecting their side to have then shown greater enterprise were frustrated.
Rotherham improved markedly following Slater's half-chance - with Shane Ferguson's dangerous set-pieces emblematic of the visitors' threat going forward.
Taylor was, however, indebted to the agility of goalkeeper Viktor Johansson after 27 minutes.
Adama Traore's perfect threaded ball towards Ryan Longman inside the penalty area provided the Hull attacker with a one-on-one opportunity from a central position.
Longman did everything right with a cute lob, but Johansson stayed big and strong to snuff out the danger.
Rotherham, however, continued to probe, and Ferguson will regret not having made cleaner contact off a skidding cross from Cohen Bramall shortly before the break.
The beginning of the second half mirrored that of the first: Hull having plenty of the ball, but not doing anything with it, and Rotherham offering a fleeting threat from the wings.
That was until the 63rd minute when Malcolm Ebiowei teed up Lewie Coyle on the right of Rotherham's box.
Coyle's low cross was deflected towards Johansson, who parried the ball towards substitute Tufan.
Tufan's powerful hit was goalbound, but Ferguson did brilliantly to pre-empt the danger - with the ball ricocheting off the Northern Ireland international's back and onto the crossbar.
Similarly to when Longman was denied in the first half, Rotherham rallied, but they gave away possession in a decent attacking position that led to Quina's sending off.
Tufan was artfully played through on goal by Traore in a stirring counter-attack, with Quina having little option but to foul the Mali international inches from the inside of the penalty box.
The resulting free-kick came to nothing as Rotherham - one late Slater chance aside - played out the remainder of the game with relative ease.
Hull's Liam Rosenior:
"It's frustrating. We have to score the chances we create. If we do score early, we go on to win comfortably. We had enough quality on the pitch but we were not ruthless enough. We started the game really, really well and then Rotherham did what they're very good at - which is breaking up the game.
"We have created more than enough chances to win two games. We had 14 shots on goal and just one on target."
Rotherham's Matt Taylor:
"When you go down to 10 men away from home it was always going to be difficult, but I was pleased with the performance. Hull are a good, possession-based team but with that possession there's got to be an end and they didn't hurt us that much. We perhaps didn't do enough from an attacking perspective - we didn't really make their goalkeeper work hard enough - but we reacted in a really positive way (following the sending-off).
"Points are going to be picked up from all teams down there, so I'm so pleased that we took something away from this. It could have been heartache, but this has got to be our start, our middle and our end."
