Martin Boyle insists Hibernian are more than confident of overcoming Rijeka in Croatia to reach the Europa Conference League play-off stage after Jack Ross’s side squandered a handful of chances during the first-leg 1-1 draw.
The balance of the tie has arguably tilted in Rijeka’s favour, although the result from Thursday evening did not tell the full story of the game. The hosts dominated much of possession and could have been sitting comfortably ahead of the return leg had it not been for some wasteful attacking play.
Prince Ampem scored against the run of play for Goran Tomic’s side in the second half before Boyle levelled six minutes later. And the Australia international insists the Leith outfit have nothing to fear when they travel to the Adriatic coast.
“I believe we can go through, we believe in the squad and that we’ve got more than enough,” Boyle said. “They have a few players who caused us some problems and we conceded a sloppy goal but I’m sure if we go over there and play the same way we did, I firmly believe we can get through.
“We should have won. It was a good match, we did well and kept the ball well and caused them a lot of problems. Hopefully we can take that over there.
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“We watched a few clips, we prepared well and we knew they would be a decent team — they play in a decent league — but we also have players who can hurt them and I felt like we did that.”
Hibs’ attention now turns to tomorrow’s Premiership visit of Ross County as they attempt to make it two wins from two in the league following last weekend’s success at Motherwell.
It will be the Easter Road side’s fifth game in 17 days and with that in mind head coach Jack Ross is likely to freshen up his team. However, Boyle believes they have a strong enough squad to compete on both the domestic and European stage.
Christian Doidge, Scott Allan and Josh Doig, who had been unsettled by transfer interest, were among those on the bench against Rijeka.
“Everyone is playing well so it’s obviously different for the guys to come [in],” Boyle added. “The gaffer made one change with Jake [Doyle-Hayes] coming back in after his injury and I thought he was fantastic.
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“We’ve had a good start to the season and it was another good showing on Thursday. We’ll take it into Sunday’s game then think about the game next week.”
Boyle is certainly not going to complain about the physically draining sequence of matches. “We’re enjoying it and I prefer playing games than training to be honest,” the 28-year-old said. “I just want the games to keep coming, it’s just how you recover and then go again and I feel like we’re doing well.”
Ross, the head coach, insists Doig will be part of his squad plans moving forward, having expressed his frustration over the transfer saga. The talented left back was omitted from the team for last weekend’s win way to Motherwell.
However, as talks behind the scenes with interested parties have shown no sign of reaching a successful conclusion any time soon, Ross has welcomed the defender back into his plans.
“I’ve tried to be fairly frank in my explanation of the situation,” Ross said. “We were very strongly led to believe that things would move quickly. They haven’t done so and we take control of the situation again. From now Josh will be part of my squad unless something changes. We were led to believe something would happen and it didn’t materialise.”
