Bradley Orr is determined that Town will recover from last week’s defeat at Leeds when his former club, Bristol City, visit Portman Road tomorrow.
The on-loan Blackburn right-back fully realises the significance of the fixture as the west country outfit are just one place below Ipswich in the Championship table with five points fewer than Mick McCarthy’s men.
Orr, 30, said: "We were on a decent little run — four games unbeaten — and obviously we had a slip-up against Leeds. Now it’s important that we try to react in the right way and bounce back, which we have done previously.
"We have to be focused on the job in hand. First and foremost we must work hard for each other in order to give ourselves any chance of winning the game against Bristol City. It’s a game we have been looking forward to and it’s a good game to have at home after a defeat.”
Town’s revival under McCarthy has seen them take 16 points from his nine games in charge, not only climbing off the bottom of the league but also out of the relegation zone in which they had become entrenched under previous boss Paul Jewell.
But Orr knows that Ipswich can ill afford a sixth home defeat of the season if they are to avoid being sucked back into the relegation dogfight.
He added: "They are five points behind us and that’s not a lot in this division. It can easily be made up or easily lost in the space of a week or two.
"It’s a fight with both clubs down there and we’re all prepared to scrap for our lives. We’ll see how it turns out come the end of the season.”