Top scorer Daryl Murphy has admitted it would be “devastating” if Town don’t finish in the play-offs at the end of the season.
Saturday’s narrow but thoroughly deserved home win over already-relegated Blackpool was enough to edge Mick McCarthy’s men into sixth place on goal difference and now their task is to ensure they maintain their top-six status over the final four games of the regular season.
Murphy said: "To miss out now would be a massive disappointment because we’ve all worked so hard the whole season.
"To narrowly miss out would be devastating for us, considering the position we were in in January. But we know what we have to do — if we win our games we’ll be fine and going into the play-offs who knows what will happen?”
McCarthy won promotion with previous clubs Sunderland and Wolves, valuable experience as far as Town are concerned, and Murphy, a member of that Black Cats squad, added: "The gaffer has been in this position a lot of times and he knows how to handle it.
"What the players need at the minute is the right recovery because we have so many games but we’re all raring to go for it.
"It is very physically demanding but while it’s hard we also love doing it and it’s what we want to do. You just recover — you have to because there are so many games.
"You have to make sure you do the right things in between them and you’ll be fine. They have it spot-on here. We do the cryotherapy and it’s brilliant for recovery, as I’m sure all the lads would agree. But basically you just have to get on with it because you’ve got no choice.”
The Championship’s leading marksman with 23 league goals, Murphy did not add to his impressive tally in Saturday’s hard-earned victory over Blackpool, but he provided the cross from which Christophe Berra nodded in a dramatic 83rd minute winner.
He said: "When I got the ball I thought there were too many bodies in front of me to take a shot. I saw there were also plenty of bodies in the box and thankfully I hung it up and the big Scot got his head on it to get us the points.
"We knew going into the game that we needed the three points if we wanted to get into the top six and thankfully we did that.”