Nathan Lowe believes his dream Hibs debut could not have gone any better after his match-winning brace against Brøndby IF in the final pre-season outing at Easter Road.
Lowe – who joined on loan from EFL Championship side Stoke City earlier this week – opened his account for with a bit of fortune, then doubled his tally two minutes later with a diving front-post header after a surge into the Brøndby box.
And although Patrick Mortensen halved the deficit before half-time, it was Lowe who was the hero in Leith, and he was rightly full of smiles at full-time.
“No (it couldn’t have gone much better), but it’s just a shame it’s a pre-season game and it doesn’t actually count on the CV,” he joked in his post-match interview with Hibs TV.
“It was good to get 45 minutes, which are the first for me in pre-season personally, so that was nice
“I’m still getting up to speed on the other stuff, the movements and learning about my teammates, so there’s a lot of stuff to be done with that, but I think it was a positive start.
“I wouldn’t say I expected to score that quickly, but I would have put pressure on myself to score at least one, and two is an added bonus.
“I knew I was playing 45 minutes at least, so I’d like to have thought I’d have scored, but to score two minutes apart was very fortunate, and it was a great ball for the second one as well.
The first one was a dream scenario where there’s a mix-up at the back and it’s almost an open goal, which was brilliant for me
“I think [Martin] Boyle said after it wasn’t his finest cross, but I think it was more just the fact that he’d hung it up and allowed me to attack it, and I was able to sneak in at the near-post and head it home.
“I could have had a third, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.
“The earlier you score, the better in all sorts of games, so I think it’s obvious the fans can take a bit of confidence from the fact I know where the back of the net is, but at the same time, we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves.
“It’s a pre-season game at the end of the day, so we’ll see if the goals are still flowing when the season starts, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
