Hibs ratings, report and video from five-goal thriller as UEFA Conference League adventure continues

Hibs held off 10-man Partizan to battle their way into the UEFA Conference League play-offs on a night of unbelievable drama at Easter Road, emerging as aggregate winners from a game that boasted a world-class strike from Kieron Bowie, more chaos than a group of five-year-olds hopped up on blue Smarties and Skittles – and an extra-time winner that elevated Chris Cadden into the ranks of Hibernian heroes with exquisite timing. Despite losing 3-2 on the night, David Gray’s men secured a 4-3 aggregate victory that will see them play Legia Warsaw for a place in the league phases of UEFA’s third-tier club competition.

The first leg is back here next Thursday night. Judging by the European fare served up her so far this season, the club had best fit seat belts before allowing paying punters back in for another continental contest.

In a game that had everything, including another red card for a Partizan side reduced to ten men in the first leg in Belgrade a week ago, Hibs squandered the 2-0 lead earned with distinction in Serbia, as the visitors scored two unanswered goals to square the tie up before half-time. Bowie’s wondrous moment just before the hour mark looked as if it would carry David Gray’s men into the play-offs – until the visitors equalised with the last kick of time added on at the end of the regulation 90 minutes.

But Hibs were not to be denied. And Cadden’s goal with 99 minutes on the clock was enough, along with a couple of heroic saves from goalkeeper Jordan Smith – more than culpable for at least one of Partizan’s goals – to get the job done. And … breathe.

Can anyone remember how this game started? Well, Hibs might have put the tie beyond all doubt inside the opening three minutes, had Cadden’s close-range shot from a Martin Boyle cross – shouldn’t that be the other way around? – not forced a fine point-blank save from Marko Milosevic. After such a promising start, home fans began to dream of a comfortable evening watching their heroes.

Young Milan Vukotic, a player coveted by any number of clubs across Europe, had other ideas. Picking up a lose ball a good 25 yards out, his right-footed strike hit the top corner despite Jordan Smith getting a hand on the thunderous effort. Squeaky bum time it was to be, then.

Gray’s men responded with a flurry of chances in and around the half-hour mark, a couple of Boyle crosses causing all sorts of havoc in the Partizan defence before a short corner on the right allowed Dylan Levitt to swing in a left-footed delivery that met big Rocky Bushiri climbing above everyone at the far post. Unfortunately for the Congolese defender, he just couldn’t direct his header on the right side of the post.

In truth, though, it was the visitors who exerted control of the contest as it neared the half-time mark, with Hibs often reduced to just kicking the ball very far away – and hoping it stayed in the opposition half long enough for them to regroup. This was shaping up to be a gruelling night.

The mood was hardly improved when the Serbs doubled their lead just before half-time. If any one of two or three Hibs players were culpable in allowing Jovan Milosevic to get away his weak left-footed shot from about 10 yards, Smith must carry the can for being beaten by an absolute trundler of a strike.

Hibs did not start the second half looking any less shaky. But, in Bowie, they have that player capable of doing anything.

There really ought to have been no danger as he waited under a dropping ball a good 30 yards from goal. But one almighty swing of the boot left visiting keeper Milosevic stranded as his effort looped high into the night sky, dropping just under the bar and no more than an inch from the post.

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke, watching from the main stand, had to be impressed. But would the 22-year-old’s glorious strike be enough o see Hibs over the line?

The home crowd, in raptures over their good fortune at being here to see such a strike in the flesh, were further enlivened when Nikola Simic was sent off for a second booking moments after the fifth goal of the night. Nothing could go wrong now …

But all of the joy was sucked out of the atmosphere in the cruellest of fashions as, just into the sixth minute of five added on, substitute Andrej Kostic beat Smith from a killer cut-back to send the game into extra time. Having been knocked out of the Europa League in extra time by Midtjylland, surely the same couldn’t happen again.

Up stepped Cadden to deliver. After Josh Mulligan had cut in from the right and hit a difficult-to-hold shot, the wingback pounced on the rebound. And set off on a lap of honour unlikely to be forgotten.

There was still time for drama. For Smith, who had already made amends for his earlier blunder with a couple of fine stops, to pull off a blinding one-on-one save to deny Mario Jurcevic. And for a Partizan goal to be disallowed for offside. And Smith to make one more brilliant save.

Let’s do this all again next week.