Town captain Dara O’Shea has admitted the thought of promotion to the Premier League has been difficult to put to the back of his mind this week.

Victory over Queens Park Rangers at Portman Road would secure a second-place finish and book the Blues a ticket back to the top flight at the first time of asking.

Remarkably, that would also mark the third promotion in four years with Town on the brink of creating even more history under boss Kieran McKenna.

Knowing the prize at stake has undoubtedly lifted spirits, and O’Shea says there has been an extra boost around the training ground as the season finale comes into view.

“It’s hard not to think about that,” he said. “We’re all human beings and we get excited. For us, as cliché as it is, it is another game, and it’s a game we have to go out and win and put our best foot forward in.

“We know the task at hand, we know what we need to do, we’ve prepped really well for the game.

“There’s massive confidence in the group and I think we’re in a really good place. The past few weeks, where we are right now is really promising.

“We’ve got almost a full squad of availability which is amazing, and everybody’s champing at the bit to play. Training has been really good and there’s been an energy there.

“I’m just really looking forward to the game starting, it feels like a lifetime waiting for it to happen. We’re really excited for it, play the game, and hopefully come after the game we’ll be celebrating together.

“It has been a small bit different, I think there’s been more excitement around the group. The position we’re in as a team, the confidence has been growing and that’s what you want to see at this time of the season.

“You want to see the energy and the buzz in training, and it’s been there. It’s just about going out and performing and delivering, doing everything that we do on the training pitch and taking it into the game.

“The hours we spent watching clips and analysis is all coming down to the 90 minutes on Saturday. That’s a great opportunity for us as players to have.

“At the start of the season, if we were sat in the room and asked what we wanted, it would have been that. We’ve got ourselves in that position now and we’ve just got to go out and deliver it.”

O’Shea signed for Town in the summer of 2024 as the club prepared for its first campaign in the Premier League for 22 years off the back of promotion two seasons ago.

While that means the Irishman has not been promoted with the Blues before, he does have experience of achieving success in the second tier with West Bromwich Albion in 2019/20.

The final stages of that season were played behind closed doors due to Covid, with O’Shea admitting that was an unusual experience.

He said: “It was really strange. There were no fans there, but quickly after the game, there were fans all around the stadium. It was a really strange moment thinking back to it because there was no interaction as such.

“Fans were locked outside the gates and we were stood in the car park celebrating 20 metres away from each other. Then we were back to the stadium and the team hotel, had a couple of drinks, and everyone was gone.

“It was a really weird time, probably the one regret I had back then was not celebrating as much as we could have, but that was the stage of the world then and there was not much more we could do.

“I was a lot younger then and probably didn’t understand the magnitude of getting promoted. I maybe thought it was a thing that happened all the time. It’s so hard to achieve and I’ve found that one.

“To do it back then in an empty stadium was strange and a bit weird. To do it in our stadium in front of our people, no doubt it’s going to be an unbelievable atmosphere and something that I’m really looking forward to playing in. It would be amazing.”

Coincidentally, the Baggies’ promotion that year was secured on the final day with a home clash against QPR at the Hawthorns.

O’Shea says replicating that feat this weekend would be one of the proudest moments of his career.

“I spoke to Darnell [Furlong] this week and said it’s funny how it’s fallen back to QPR again,” he said. “Hopefully we can come on the right side like we did that time and be celebrating.

“It would mean everything. It’s one of them things you look back on and it’s a bit gutting we couldn’t celebrate it in that way with the fans.

“I love the fans here at Ipswich. I think they’ve been unbelievable for me and unbelievable for the group. It’s something that we want to do together, everything we do as a group is for the football club and for them. The support they give us is unbelievable and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

“We love playing at Portman Road. The buzz and the energy we get when we step off that bus and walk into the stadium is not like anything else. To do that at home with them there would be magical.”

Photo: TWTD