Chairman David Sheepshanks talks about Town's relegation and subsequent administration this evening in Sky One's How TV Changed Football Forever (10pm). The documentary was produced by Town fan and TWTD reader Richard Wiseman.
Sheepshanks appears in a section of the programme entitled When It All Goes Wrong and reveals how devastating he found the Blues' fall from grace: "To see it go wrong, when you've set the whole thing up so carefully that it can't go wrong, was the most galling thing ever."
"It was awful, and I have described it [relegation, then administration] as like living in quicksand for about a year, because from then on it was a slow death. And it was hell, utter hell."
Wiseman, a Portman Road regular since the Robson era, told TWTD that the Town chairman still seemed deeply affected by events earlier in the decade: "It was a lengthy and, at times, emotional interview, and I'm sorry that the constraints of pace and time prevent more of it being shown tonight.
"When David discussed the events of 2002/03, it was almost as if he was recalling being bereaved. No one should ever doubt, after seeing this, the amount of emotional investment which he has put into the club's success, and the effect which past events have had on his health and reputation.
"Unfortunately, though, as a result of calculated risks made during 2001/02, Ipswich Town has become one of the most famous examples of the financial ruin that can happen to a football club when it unexpectedly drops out of the Premiership.
"However, it is worth remembering just how thin that the knife-edge can be between success and failure. I was at Sunderland, on the opening day of 2001/02, where our performance probably deserved a point. If we'd have received one, we'd have stayed up at the season's end, Sunderland would have gone down and the financial fall-out which followed might never have occurred.
"The stakes are massively high in these days of big-money Premiership TV contracts, though, as viewers will see for themselves tonight.”
How TV Changed Football Forever is repeated on Sky Two on Thursday at 9pm.
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