Skipper Sam Morsy says the Blues squad was back training hard today following the weekend promotion celebrations ahead of Sunday’s final game of the campaign at Fleetwood.
Town could claim the League One title should they pick up more points from the game against the Cod Army than leaders Plymouth manage at Port Vale.
The 31-year-old thoroughly enjoyed Saturday’s 6-0 win against Exeter, which confirmed the Blues’ promotion, and the subsequent celebrations.
"It’s been great, it’s been a long time coming for the club,” he told talkSPORT Drive with Blues legend Darren Bent and Andy Goldstein. "The players loved it, the fans loved, it was absolutely incredible.”
Morsy, who joined Town from Middlesbrough in the summer of 2021, admits there was some pressure during the spell after Christmas which saw them drop to fourth following the back-to-back draws with Sheffield Wednesday and Bristol Rovers.
"I think the expectation was promotion, and automatic promotion, so when you veer off slightly, you definitely feel that,” he reflected.
"We’ve been pretty consistent throughout the whole season but there was a spell where our rivals were in incredible form and we ended up drawing a couple consecutively and it almost looked like it was going to be the play-offs.
"Within that and my responsibility, I definitely felt like I needed to try my best to galvanise, whether it was my own performances or teammates performances because nothing less than automatic promotion would have been enough.
"Play-offs, but that’s a lottery, isn’t it? It’s been a challenging season, but we’ve always remained calm and have remained together with the group and in the end we’ve managed to do it.”
Looking back on the game and the pre-match welcome instigated by fans’ group Blue Action, Morsy continued: "In the lead up, family and friends and the missus kept sending me things, ‘This is planned before, there’s going to be thousands there before’ and I was thinking ‘We’ve actually got to win the game because if we don’t win the game it’s going down to the final day!’.
"I had to tell family and friends ‘Look, don’t send me anything, I’m going to stay off social media a little bit. I’ll enjoy it on the day, but there’s a job to do ultimately’.
"And I think the lads were really, really professional. Before that we’d won 12 out of 13, so we were in a calm place and we know what we’re about as a team. We’re an intense team, we put a lot of pressure on teams but we also need calmness as well.
"I was consciously trying to make myself calm and transfer that energy into the guys because we knew at Portman Road, we’ve only lost one all season, we’ve scored an incredible amount of goals, if we were calm and played our game, I was really confident we’d win.
"It was probably the build-up where you’re thinking that we just need to focus on the game, but as soon as it started, we started great, scored an early goal and from them it was just a great day.”
Asked how important it is to go up as champions and to reach the 100 points and 100 goals milestones - Town are currently on 97 and 99 respectively - Morsy said: "The position we’re in, and it wasn’t so long ago it looked like the play-offs. We were 10 and eight points behind, so to do what we’ve done and to get over the line, it definitely felt at the weekend that we’d accomplished our goals.
"But, saying that, the players, the management, the ownership, we’ll all demand nothing less than 100 per cent at Fleetwood to try and win the game.
"It’s not in our hands, but all we can do is try our best to win. We trained well, we trained really hard today, really hard.
"If there’s one thing about the manager, the sessions are really tough, there’s no let-up, it was a solid, solid session today.
"The manager wanted us to enjoy it because it’s even more sweet the way we did it really. Everyone wrote us off, there were even people saying we weren’t going to finish in the play-offs because it just got that tight.
"There also has to be a level of professionalism, which is what the manager demands. The manager is an absolute perfectionist and he wouldn’t tolerate just going into the game half-hearted, especially when our fans travel up and down the country. It’s really important that we give the best account of ourselves at the weekend.”
How far can manager McKenna go in the game? "It wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up anywhere at some point because I really do think he’s that good.”
Bent, who came through the academy at Town before making his debut in the UEFA Cup in 2001/02, interjected: "In the Premier League with Ipswich. He’ll be fine where he is.”