Town boss Paul Lambert has praised his skipper Luke Chambers after the 35-year-old broke into the Blues’ all-time top 10 league appearance makers at Doncaster on Tuesday.
Chambers, now in his ninth season at Portman Road having been signed by Paul Jewell following his release by Nottingham Forest in the summer of 2012, has now played 344 times for Town in the league, all of them starts, drawing level with Jimmy Leadbetter, who was a key man between 1955 and 1965 and won Division Three South, Division Two and Division One in Sir Alf Ramsey’s team.
Lambert says Chambers’s long service with the Blues is a tribute to his professionalism starting back in his early days at Northampton Town.
"You can probably go back through Luke’s career to when it started and the way he has looked after himself I think’s the biggest compliment I can give him,” he said.
"When you start professional football when you’re 15, 16, 17 and you stay in the game for nearly 20 years and putting your body through that every single week, training every day, playing every Saturday, the longevity of it is incredible.
"I was fortunate I did it myself. If you look after yourself and you do the right things, then you tend to find it repays you and he’s got the rewards for that in playing that number of games. To get in the top 10 at this club is a great achievement.”
He says the Kettering-born centre-half or right-back, where he is currently operating, is never one to shirk responsibility.
"Whether it’s a tackle or putting your head in, bravery’s taking the ball,” he said. "And it doesn’t matter whether there are fans there or no fans there, you take the ball in certain areas of the pitch where some people just shy away from it.
"And I think that’s the greatest thing for a footballer, you keep taking the ball, no matter what, even if you make a mistake you keep taking it. That’s what I look for in players, you always want them to be available for the ball.
"I don’t expect people that play the game to hide, I never did myself, so they have to take the ball, and he does that.”