Town boss Mick McCarthy has revealed that he turned down the chance to be interviewed for the manager's job with Sunday's final-day opponents Nottingham Forest in the summer prior to taking charge at Portman Road in November 2012.
"I had a phone call and they asked me if I’d go and have an interview and I said no,” McCarthy recalled.
"Well, I said I would and then I said no, I wasn’t going for an interview because it said in the paper then on Saturday morning while I was in Portugal that Mick McCarthy is in Portugal and he’d coming for an interview on Monday, so I said ‘No I’m not’.
"I wasn’t offered the job, I was asked to go for an interview. I don’t want the world to know I’ve been for an interview, that’s a great recipe for success that, isn’t it? Everybody [told] you’ve been to an interview and then they say ‘No, we’ve turned Mick McCarthy down’. That’s a good one isn’t it?
"That’s kudos for them, you know, somebody who has won the Championship twice, we’ve turned him down. I don’t give people the chance to do that. Maybe they wouldn’t but they don’t get the chance.”