MIDDLESBROUGH were condemned to an end of season play-off battle when Bournemouth secured a mega-rich leap to the Premier League tonight but this was the message from the Riverside: “We can still hit the big time.”

First half goals from Marc Pugh and Matt Ritchie did the damage before Callum Wilson added a third late on to lift the Cherries three points clear of Boro ahead of this weekend’s final round of fixtures with a 3-0 win over Bolton.

And with Middlesbrough needing a goal swing of 20 to swap places with them on Saturday afternoon, Eddie Howe’s men could celebrate promotion to the top-flight with a game remaining.

Now Aitor Karanka must ensure his players are lifted for a play-off battle and this weekend will determine whether they face Derby, Ipswich or Brentford over a two-legged semi-final for the right to compete a Premier League shoot-out at Wembley.

The first leg of Middlesbrough’s semi-final will be on either May 8/9 with the return on May 15/16 depending on where they actually finish. The final will be held at Wembley on May 25.

After coming off the bench to fire Middlesbrough back in to Saturday’s game with Fulham, before it all went wrong again deep in to stoppage-time, winger Adam Reach thinks he is ready to make a big impact in the remaining matches of the season.

Like the rest of the squad he had hoped to avoid heading in to a further three pulsating, high pressured games to seal promotion after this weekend’s visit of Brighton to a Riverside which is due to be a sell-out.

But Reach, who has not started a game since April 6 and has been in and out of the side since the turn of the year, is convinced he will never shirk his responsibilities even if he has not been showing the sort of form he did earlier in the campaign.

The 22-year-old said: “At this point in time I am not thinking about myself, I haven’t been playing as much, maybe I have not been up to the standards I set at the start of the season, but I will give my all whatever situation I am in and Saturday that showed. It will be no different whenever I go on the pitch.”

Reach was brought on as a substitute just after the hour at Craven Cottage and within two minutes he had pulled Middlesbrough back to 2-1 with a decent enough strike following a good attacking move.

He said: “Games can change in an instant. It was not the cleanest of strikes I will ever hit but it went in, and it put some belief back in the players. We started to play with more energy, we were on top and they made more mistakes. We could have scored three or four more.

“We were not at the races in the first half. The substitutions gave a bit of energy. We tried hard to get something but it wasn’t enough and we move on. That’s Championship football when everyone is fighting for a prize that is so big like we are.”

Middlesbrough could have put a little more pressure on Bournemouth by leaving Fulham with a point after Kike’s 88th minute header had levelled things up having come from two goals down.

But Karanka opted to push up goalkeeper Dimi Konstantopoulos for a stoppage-time corner in the hope of sealing three points instead. The move backfired as Fulham counterattacked and Ross McCormack slotted in the winner.

But Reach said: “If Dimi had headed that in then we would have been saying something different. In hindsight a draw may have been enough but I doubt it. We had to go for it.

“It was a very down changing room, everyone was a bit gutted but we move on. Our ultimate aim is promotion. There are two ways to get that, it’s either automatic or through the play-offs ... it’s now the play-offs so we just have to go for it.”