New Blues boss Mick McCarthy felt he’d been out of the game long enough when Town came calling in the wake of Paul Jewell’s Portman Road exit a week and a half ago. The 53-year-old had been without a job since being sacked by Wolves in February.
McCarthy says managers can get forgotten when they are without clubs and can also lose their edge: "I’m sure you can also get rusty. I didn’t want to be out for so long. Eight months is enough.
"I was neither mentally nor physically exhausted but I was quite happy to have a break away from it.
"I had three years at Sunderland and six at Wolves. It was full on. Everybody else has to work but it is slightly more pressurised than most jobs. Better paid, but more pressure.
"I could have sat around, waiting and waiting, and it mightn’t have happened. I wasn’t prepared for that. I wanted to get back to work.”
While he says he would have liked another top flight club, he’s not sure those he might have got would have been too much more attractive that positions with Championship sides: "If I got a Premier League job where do you think I would get one? In the bottom three, bottom four.
"Even then they are the ones supposedly under pressure and Harry’s name is mentioned for all of them.
"It’s a tough job, this. I’ve got to keep them up and that isn’t going to be easy. I just have to find a formula.”
Inevitably, the events of Saipan ahead of the World Cup in 2002 have received more than a few mentions in recent days with McCarthy taking on the job vacated by Roy Keane in January 2011.
However, McCarthy says that’s nothing new for him: "I’ll be about 75, walking my dog and somebody will say ‘There’s that bloke who sent Roy Keane home’.
"It’s always the same. I can’t go 24 hours without somebody bringing it up. I don’t know if Roy gets similar. I haven’t a clue but it doesn’t affect me. Did I ring him up before I accepted this job? No.”
McCarthy was in charge of the Republic of Ireland from 1996 to 2002 and, although playing down recent links with the role, he doesn’t rule out returning to that job at some point in the future.
"I’d go back, but when it’s right, when it’s available,” he said. "I’m not trying to add pressure on to anybody else.
"Giovanni Trapattoni has got the results that I expected him to get. He has beaten Kazakhstan, beaten the Faroe Islands and lost to Germany. Ireland are playing for a play-off spot because Germany will win it.”