Town captain Sam Morsy has spoken of his pride in leading the club to promotion back to the Championship, while at the same time emphasising how much the players want to finish the season as League One champions.
Midfielder Morsy, 31, said: "It’s a great feeling and it’s the reason I came to the club, for the long-term project and long-term ambitions. It’s been amazing to finally do it and the overriding feeling is always relief because of how badly I wanted to do it.
"A lot of teams in the division, like Sheffield Wednesday, would have had similar ambitions and so would Derby, Bolton and Portsmouth, but it’s not an easy division to get out of.
"We’ve been consistent throughout the season; we’ve been in fine form recently and we’ve ended up getting the job done.
"This is the fifth time I’ve won promotion in my career but it’s not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I think it’s at the back of my mind but it’s obviously an honour and a privilege to get this club promoted.
"It’s a fantastic club with a great history and I’ve told the rest of the players that they are now part of that history with this promotion.
"But we’re trying to get the club back to where it was before, which means bigger hurdles and bigger challenges ahead. This was a tough challenge in itself because teams didn’t make it easy for us.
"It’s been a case of teams setting up in lots of different ways against us. That is paying us huge respect and a tribute to how dangerous they view us, but we have to see this achievement of winning promotion back to the Championship as simply the start. It’s not a case of job done yet.
"We’re on 97 points so we still have a chance to make it 100 and we only need to score once to make it 100 goals as well, which would be great. But while the statistics might suggest it has been fairly easy, there is no way that is the case. I can assure you it has been anything but easy.”
The celebrations that followed last week’s emphatic 6-0 trouncing of Exeter — the Blues’ second such home win in the month of April — went on over the weekend and manager Kieran McKenna gave his players Monday off before they returned to work the next day.
Morsy added: "It was an incredible day and after working very hard to achieve our objective it was about enjoying the occasion. You have to remain professional and stay fully focused, but at the same time you have to take it all in.
"When the game started it was business as usual, everybody doing their jobs as we tried to win the game — just as it has been all season.
"Since July it has been about the team and working as hard as possible and running for each other. We scored a really good first goal and after that we were in complete control and managed to score some more good goals.”
Asked about his favourite moment of the day, the skipper replied: "Being able to lead my daughter out was really nice but to be honest the best moment for me was when the first goal went in. It was a great goal, it really settled everyone down and it set the tone for the rest of the day.
"There was another moment when my daughter pointed up and said ‘That’s my dad’ — it’s on the club video — and that meant a great deal to me as well. I’m just glad they captured that moment because it was really lovely and we’ve been able to play it back a few times. Moments like that are what you cherish for a lifetime.”
Morsy and his colleagues are heading north this weekend for Sunday’s last game of the season at Fleetwood and he didn’t deny the extra day’s rest could come in handy.
"I think what helps is that the game is on Sunday and not Saturday,” he admitted. "We have an extra day to recover after our emotions were very high last week.
"Everyone is thoroughly invested in the club and I’m not just talking about the players, but staff as well, they have put their heart and soul into working very, very hard like you wouldn’t believe.
"It took a huge effort by everyone to get over the line and obviously the lads have celebrated really well, but come Tuesday it was back to business and preparing for the game at Fleetwood, which we will be doing our absolute best to win because it would give us a chance of winning the division.”
While Town attempt to extend their unbeaten league run to 19 league games, leaders Plymouth will wind up their campaign at Port Vale, the club for whom former Wolves trainee Morsy made his first senior appearance more than 13 years ago.
Morsy smiled: "They could do us a favour but in the situation we’re in all we can do is put all our focus on winning at Fleetwood and see what it means.
"All through the season it has been about us and what we do. We will do everything we can to win the game and we might also need a bit of luck if we’re going to be champions. But if it doesn’t work out like that, we’ll still be happy because we’ve won promotion.”
The Egyptian international looked back over the season and recalled how the Blues drew three league games in a row in February.
"When you look back, there have been some defining moments,” he said. "Like when we drew against Cambridge, Sheffield Wednesday and at Bristol Rovers, and we had Christian Walton to thank for saving a penalty at Cambridge, which was a huge, huge point for us. Although it wasn’t a win it kept the momentum going and it was less damaging than losing.
"Against Wednesday there was a huge moment when they were 2-0 ahead and their striker went one-on-one with Christian. It could have been 3-0 at half-time to them, which would have been a massive challenge, but Nathan’s [Broadhead] fabulous free-kick went in and instead it was 2-1 at the break and we managed to take a point in the end.
"Even at Bristol Rovers, there was a situation where Woolfy [Luke Woolfenden] cleared the ball off the line. There wasn’t really any danger of losing the game that night but Woolfy did incredibly well to stop the ball going in and so we put another point on the board. Not what we wanted at the time, but there was a resilience about us not to lose any of these games.
"After that we went on a phenomenal run through so many players hitting top form at the right time and things tending to fit into place for us.”
Morsy also had praise for manager Kieran McKenna, as well as his staff, adding: "He’s done an absolutely phenomenal job. I was talking to a friend of mine this week, someone at a big club and who had played against us this season, and he was saying how good a team we were. I was explaining some of the work we do during the week and he couldn’t believe what I was telling him.
"He just said ‘Wow, so that’s why you are up there’ and I said the manager and his staff have put in an incredible amount of work to get us to where we are now.
"The manager has brought in his experience and what he knows on the coaching side, but he is also a fantastic man who can relate to anyone and his man-management skills are something else.
"He’s not actually much older than I am but he has been incredible in the way he has helped me. He quickly gained our total respect and he has been able to improve us all. He deserves the success that has come his way and for a first full season in management it doesn’t really get much better.”