Town fly out to Ireland this morning for their now annual pre-season training camp at the Carton House Hotel in Co Kildare.
Manager Mick McCarthy has been taking his squads to the historic mansion 20 minutes away from Dublin since his days as Sunderland manager and believes it’s the perfect environment in which to prepare for the campaign ahead.
"Carton House is an absolutely beautiful place with a fantastic surface, the playing surface is always great,” he said.
"They have a wonderful gym with weights that we can’t pick up because it’s the Irish Rugby Football Union’s gym, dumbbells that you can’t even move! I don’t know if they just put them there to scare everybody.
"The food’s excellent, the rooms are great. I’ve never had one single, solitary complaint from a footballer about going there, which is amazing because there’s generally something wrong, and there never is.
"The treatment that we get [is excellent] and the lads always get to play a game of golf when we’ve a bit of spare time, the ones that like to play.”
The Blues will play their first friendly of pre-season on Saturday 9th July against Dublin side Shelbourne at Tolka Park (KO 3pm), a fixture which has also become a regular feature of Town’s pre-seasons under McCarthy.
"We’re playing Shelbourne again, we had Adam McDonnell from there, and it just suits as we’re in Dublin and the lads have a couple of beers on the Saturday night,” he added. "It’s just a well-structured trip that the lads enjoy and we get the maximum out of it.”
Kevin Bru will join-up with the squad for the trip to Carton House having been given additional time off as he was away with Mauritius earlier in the summer, while Daryl Murphy, who was given two further weeks off after the Euros, will start his pre-season on Tuesday 12th July, the day after the rest of the squad return from Ireland.
@EssexCricket was great to meet big Mick @Official_ITFC at Chelmsford this evening pic.twitter.com/IZ1u7IozXR
— phil corton (@mopedphil) July 1, 2016
Meanwhile, McCarthy was a guest of Essex CCC at the ECG in Chelmsford on Friday, where he signed autographs and had photos taken with fans as the home side beat local rivals Kent by 50 runs in the NatWest T20 Blast.
Former Blues chairman David Sheepshanks was also a guest of Essex, where ex-Town chief executive Derek Bowden now works in the same role.