MIDDLESBROUGH’S first friendly of the summer ended in a narrow 1-0 defeat to Sturm Graz tonight.

In a game which saw summer recruits Paddy McNair and Aden Flint make first appearances for the club, Markus Pink’s goal just before half-time secured the win.

Middlesbrough have spent the last ten days waking up early to start three session days of training in Austria, and the game with Graz was a final touch before returning to Teesside on Friday.

And Tony Pulis, the Middlesbrough boss, used the fixture to hand all the players some match action, although Daniel Ayala was back in the North-East recovering from injury.

Harry Chapman, Ben Gibson and Britt Assombalonga all missed out due to minor niggles too even though they were in Austria.

McNair, fresh from his £5m move from Sunderland, almost scored his first goal for the club when he directed an effort high and wide on 36 minutes after some good build-up play from Patrick Bamford.

Graz, runners-up in the Austrian league last season, went close when Lukas Grozurek sent his effort over, but Middlesbrough couldn’t stop Pink from nodding in a cross from the right a few minutes before the break.

Middlesbrough made plenty of changes in the second half but there was no further scoring.

Ashley Fletcher, back after his loan from Sunderland, added fresh impetus from the bench and did have the ball in the back of the net – only for it to be ruled out by the linesman’s flag for offside.

Pulis told the club website: “We were up early again this morning, working hard. They’ve come in tonight and they’ve run their socks off and that’s all you can ask.

“It’s against opposition who will be in Europe next season and who are three games in front of us. It was a good test but I thought did really well tonight.

“I’m not going to pick anyone out. I think they have all worked very hard from 6am this morning all the way through to 9pm at night. They’ve been brilliant, and their attitude has been fantastic.

“Everyone’s come through the game, we kept Patrick [Bamford], Shotts [Ryan Shotton] and Dael [Fry] out there and they’ve looked fine afterwards.”

Boro: Randolph, Shotton, Fry, Flint, Friend, Clayton, Howson, McNair, Traore, Bamford, Gestede. Subs (all used): Konstantopoulos (gk), Fabio, de Sart, Leadbitter, Wing, Tavernier, Downing, Johnson, Fletcher.

Sturm Graz: Siebenhandll, Schrammel, Avlonitis, Lackner, Grozurek, Pink, Huspek, Spenldhofer, Hierlander, Koch, Maresic. Subs: Schutezenauer, Lovric, Jantscher, Fadinger, T. Koch, Schubert, Obermair, Piras, Lema.