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McKenna: Leadership Group an Important Part of the Culture We've Built - Ipswich Town News

Town boss Kieran McKenna has spoken about the players’ leadership group which represents the wider dressing room to the club's coaching staff.

The squad nominate members of the group to work alongside skipper Sam Morsy conveying the players’ thoughts on mainly off-field matters.

"I won’t name the players, if that’s OK, because I think that’s private between the players,” McKenna said.

"It’s something that the players vote for. It’s a set-up that I like, we implemented it last season where we got the players to vote for four players to join Samy in a leadership group. Samy’s a terrific captain and we all can see drives standards on the pitch, in the game and in training.

"But I believe and like to have a little bit of a broader leadership base and have some people there to support him so that the captain isn’t handling every single thing in the dressing room and has the support of others around him.

"The players selected four players from the squad who they think would represent the dressing room well and that’s run really, really well.

"It’s something that I sit in pretty irregularly but other than that the leadership group will meet with [assistant manager] Martyn Pert and [first-team coach] Lee Grant and discuss everything around the squad, more on off the pitch issues or areas where we think we can progress and they’ll come back to me with anything I need to know.

"And other than that, they manage it really, really well and it’s something that I feel lucky to have, having such good senior professionals.

"They’re doing a really good job of managing lots of things around the dressing room and the staff support that really well, and it’s a good and important part of the culture that we’ve built.”

He added: "We’ve got, I guess you could say, 29 senior players in the dressing room now, all from different parts of the country, different ages, different backgrounds, some living a long way from home, some living here with families, 11 starting at a weekend and lots of people not starting on a weekend.

"So they need all different types of support and that can come from the staff but they also need support and leadership from within the dressing room, which is why it’s important to have a variety of leaders within the dressing room and we feel we’ve certainly got that.”

Quizzed on what gets discussed in the meetings, the Blues boss continued: "More off the pitch things. Anything form scheduling to what the calendar looks like at the moment, to infrastructure around the building, anything that can be improved.

"They can always request anything that they think would be an addition to the playing group to food on the menus, to travel, to any issues with different players, to any feedback they’d like to give to the staff on the training programmes. Everything really.

"Anything to do with team selection or tactical things or football things, my door’s always open to speak to Samy or any of the players but I think there are so many other things around it that contribute to making a happy and motivated group and it’s things like that that are managed really well between the leadership group and the coaching staff and I can make my contributions as and when they’re needed.”

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