Nick Ames, European sport correspondent for The Guardian, has reviewed All to Play For, the new book “of extraordinary scope” covering George Burley’s time as boss at Portman Road.
There is a beautiful moment three quarters of the way through All To Play For when Hermann Hreidarsson, reliving his role in the success of George Burley’s 2000/01 side, admits he has come out in goosebumps running through the memories.
Like so many others featured in a work of extraordinary scope, Hreidarsson explains that the best days of his career unfolded during a remarkable series of occurrences in Suffolk.
Nowadays, Kieran McKenna’s side are making the hairs stand up on end. But this panoramic celebration of Ipswich’s most recent great team, and its creation, prompts a similar reaction at every turn.
Compiled by lifelong Town fan Neil Prentice, it puts those seminal years between 1994 and 2002 into thousands of words and a stunningly rendered selection of photography, blending slick design with the first-person testimonies of every major architect behind Town’s journey under Burley. Its individual and collective parts bring up new treasures when read time and again.
At the tale’s centre is Burley, who contributed 15 hours of interviews in recounting the story that underpins everything. We start with his childhood in Cumnock and finish with an unsuccessful attempt to return to the Portman Road hot seat in 2018.
In between is a story told with depth, honesty and love, detailing every element that wrought Town’s promotion in 2000 and making no excuses for the sequence of events that brought those good times coming to an end.
"You have to get over it and I did,” he says. Anyone scarred by the subsequent collapse need only comb these pages to bring every piece of good feeling flooding back.
While Burley is the central hero, the most distinctive factor of All To Play For is its sheer scale. Twenty ex-players, from Mick Stockwell through to Hreidarsson, Marcus Stewart and Martijn Reuser, are interviewed and each adds texture.
Perhaps, with the benefit of two decades’ removed, it feels easier to lift the lid on certain details. Tony Mowbray, the model pro, recalls playing up in a training session and being sent home by Burley; Kieron Dyer shudders at a brutal initiation in Fore Street baths; Reuser remembers the phone call in which Burley convinced him he could take Town over the line; Jim Magilton breaks down the thoughts, feeling and processes around the 2000 play-offs forensically and remembers almost missing the victory parade while sitting in The Golf public house.
The stories flow, the picture forms and a period in Ipswich’s history that will live in hearts forever gains added life.
Prentice, in his quest for an exhaustive chronicle, has not stopped at the playing staff and includes sections on the club’s commercial and administrative progress, the European tour and a flick through programmes and other memorabilia from the era.
Remember the Punch brand? The unique story of how Robbie Williams and Damon Albarn came to model it, when Ed Sheeran’s involvement was just a twinkle in the eyes, is told at first hand here.
Ultimately, the book is a lavishly produced testament to the dream nurtured and realised by two men: Burley and David Sheepshanks. The section in which Sheepshanks mulls over the decline of 2002, including bittersweet congratulations offered by his Manchester United colleague David Gill at seemingly securing safety that February, is detailed and heart-tugging.
But the overlying note is one of unity and wonder. "A family like no other,” Burley describes Ipswich Town in his afterword. Most of us would agree, and this work celebrates one of the happiest and most united times it will ever enjoy.
All To Play For is available from TWTD here.