Town boss Mick McCarthy says hat-trick hero Grant Ward has shown no signs of getting carried away after his Roy of the Rovers debut performance in Saturday’s 4-2 home victory over Barnsley.
"I don’t think his feet ever left the ground, he seems a really sensible lad, he loved it,” McCarthy said.
"We were having our training session this morning, old versus young, he’s in the old team, believe or not, and they scored and he went, ‘Yes!’.
"And I thought, I love that. It wasn’t just Saturday, this is every day and he wants to win. I thought that was a really good sign.
"The debut, I don’t think you can write that, can you? If you had written it, it probably wouldn’t have been as enjoyable or as exciting because I think fact is better than fiction.”
Asked whether he had seen many better debuts, he recalled one from his days playing with the Republic of Ireland back in November 1987 in a 5-1 victory over Israel when former West Ham, Leicester, Walsall, Wolves and Sunderland striker David Kelly also netted three times.
"No I haven’t [seen many better]. I was trying to remember if Dave Kelly scored a hat-trick for the Republic of Ireland in a friendly at Dalymount [Park in Dublin].
"It was against Israel, he scored a hat-trick. He had a great debut, I think we won five-something.
"I’ve not seen a better debut as a manager, that’s for sure. And I’ve been saying all along, if Carlsberg did debuts, that’s what it would be. Other beers are available.”
McCarthy admits that although he thought Ward was capable of scoring goals, he didn’t see Saturday’s performance coming.
"That he could score a hat-trick in 39 minutes? No! I think I said here last week that I believed that he was a really positive player, he can go forward, he’s got a goal in him.
"I didn’t see anybody getting a hat-trick, not scoring with his first touch because that was just his first touch.
"And we’ve been crying out for goals from midfield, so let’s hope they’re not his last. He’s starting well, now he’s set a standard for him and maybe for a few others so hopefully he’ll get some more.
"I knew we were getting a good player, but I can’t ever sit here and say I expected that to happen.”
The Town boss says there was little in his team-talk which led to Ward’s remarkable first 45 minutes for the Blues.
"I said, ‘You’re going on!’,” he recalled. "Apparently Lids [fitness coach Andy Liddell] told him to go and get warmed up and he said he’s never seen a warm-up as enthusiastically done as that.
"He went on and meant it, and that’s great. I spoke to him and Conor Grant on Friday and said to them that they were maybe expecting to play but that they’ve just tipped up this week and they might have to be patient, who knows what will happen in the game but they should just be ready to go.
"Well, they both played well. Unfortunately for Conor Grant, he’s been completely overshadowed by his mate.”
Reflecting on Saturday’s victory, he added: "In terms of results, I certainly couldn’t have asked for more. In terms of performance, I don’t think we played particularly well in the first half.
"I think it was a nervy performance, I think it was everything I expected from Barnsley, that they were coming up with momentum, they’d had two good Wembley wins, they’d won a load of games, they had a good pre-season, they continued to win.
"And they came and played exactly like I would have expected them to and made it hard for us.
"Bart kept us in it with his save [from Tom Bradshaw just before the break]. When you think about a wonder hat-trick, that was equivalent to that. How he stopped that is beyond me.
"But he does that on a regular basis. No wonder our strikers get frustrated, he has them on toast some mornings, they can’t score past him. He frustrates the hell out of them."
""We could have played better, but I’ve sat here and said we’ve played really well and we were beaten. So, it couldn’t have gone much better.”
He says the versatility of his squad paid off against the Tykes: "I have to have that, I think everybody has to have that, whether they choose to do it or not.
"They were doing 4-4-2 better than we were, to be quite honest. I had been stressing all week about Barnsley being no mugs.
"I think people were listening to me but were saying, ‘Oh yeah, he’s saying it’s going to be a hard game, they’re coming up with momentum, they’re a good side, they’ve got good players, waffle, waffle, waffle’.
"Well, that was proven that in the first half because I thought they were excellent. They were doing it better than we were doing it.
"I had to do something so I chose to change the shape, put two different personnel on and it worked.”