Beattie Statue Finished But Unveiling Date Undecided Monday, 27th Apr 2020 06:00 The statue of Town legend Kevin Beattie has been finished and is now being bronzed. Sculptor and Blues season ticket holder Sean Hedges-Quinn has completed his work, which has been approved by Beattie’s family, and it is now at a foundry in London. However, a date to unveil the tribute currently remains undecided due to the ongoing coronavirus restrictions. Former Town and England defender Beattie died suddenly aged 64 in September 2018. Three months later, on what would have been his 65th birthday, the Beat Goes On campaign, led by the EADT in conjunction with BBC Radio Suffolk and TWTD, was launched with the aim of raising £110,000 for a statue in his honour.  It took just eight months for fans to reach that total, while MC Contracts and Ridgeons agreed to provide the plinth. Hedges-Quinn, also known as Coach and the man responsible for the statues of Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson, has been working on Beattie for the last few months at his studio near Stowmarket. “I’m absolutely thrilled with it, the response from all the people that knew him and the people that matter in his life and the statue committee has been quite overwhelming really,” Hedges-Quinn said. “[Beattie’s daughter] Emma was moved to tears, gave me a big bear hug and thanked me so much. But the end of the day I did it to thank Kevin Beattie because he was the greatest footballer Ipswich had and I wanted him to have the greatest statue.”  He added: “The hardest bit about the whole thing is getting the pose. The pose was extremely difficult. Normally I would have a model and he would stand and I would take photographs and I can get an idea. “But obviously no person on earth can jump like that other than Kevin Beattie, so literally I had to sculpt the whole of his body from scratch. “The next hardest thing was certainly his hair. He had a mullet, he had a perm, it was just all over the shop, so to try and get that right was quite difficult.”  An unveiling date will be decided once there is confirmation regarding football’s restart and Government advice regarding the coronavirus pandemic. Hedges-Quinn continued: “The foundry make a mould of the clay. The feet and the hands are removed, they’re done separately, and the rest of the body is covered in silicone with a fibreglass jacket. “That will take about a week and that mould then goes to the foundry where they will cast out the bronze from that.  “It will come down [to Ipswich] on a flatbed truck with a crane arm and they’ll lift him and drop him on to the plinth.” Beattie will stand on the corner of Portman Road and the car park, across the road from Sir Alf Ramsey and diagonally opposite Planet Blue.
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