Michael O’Neill opted to take the difficult test in Copenhagen with an eye on September’s fixture away to Germany, wanting to again expose his young players to a game in which they would see little of the ball.
Denmark duly bossed possession but, having fallen behind to an early own goal from Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, the hosts did not register a shot on target until Gustav Isaksen levelled in first-half stoppage time before Christian Eriksen won it in the second half.
Hume, named captain for this game and Tuesday’s friendly against Iceland, said there was plenty to take from the night, particularly given the average age of the Northern Ireland starting XI was just 23.4, down to 22.8 come the final whistle.
“I think it’s just learning from it,” the Sunderland defender said. “We’re going to have to go away to tough teams and probably suffer a bit without the ball the way we did here and try our best to be organised and disciplined.
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“It was a very young team out there, especially when the subs coming on. I don’t know what the average age was but whenever I looked around they were very young.
“Obviously there’s that wee bit of inexperience, but that’s stuff you have to learn from, because we are going to go away and it’s going to be probably even tougher than what it was here.”
After frustrating Denmark for much of the first half, Northern Ireland struggled to replicate that after the break, with the timing of Isaksen’s equaliser on the stroke of half-time changing the game.
“In the first half we were very organised whenever we did get the ball, we held on to it and kept it well,” Hume said.
“The second half we were probably a wee bit loose on it and gave it away, and that’s when they got their chances to break, when we weren’t ready and set and they had more space.
“We’ll look back on it throughout the next couple of days and learn from it. That’s kind of the risk and reward of the way we play. We want to counter, we want to try and score.
“If we do give the ball away, that’s when you’re open, it’s something we can analyse and learn from.”
