Smart moves on and off the pitch define Ipswich rise

McKenna seals Premier League return with innovative approach

Just 21 months ago Ipswich Town’s first away game of the season was in League One at Forest Green’s New Lawn Stadium in front of only 4,000 fans. Now, when the Premier League fixtures are announced on June 18, it is possible Ipswich’s first match away from home could be in Manchester United’s 74,000-capacity Old Trafford.

Ipswich’s return to the top flight after an absence of 22 years means they become just the fifth club to earn back-to-back promotions into the Premier League (following Watford, Manchester City, Southampton and Norwich City). Better still, they have achieved it in the most extraordinary manner. Not least because they will have amassed the greatest points total over two campaigns: 194 points.

But that does not go close to quantifying what Ipswich will have achieved. That comes, firstly, with a glance at the team-sheet from the XI that started against Forest Green — who, unfortunately, will be kicking off in the National League after the ignominy of their own back-to-back milestones: relegations rather than promotions.

For all the impressive investment in and modernisation of Ipswich under the American ownership of Gamechanger 20 Ltd, the company created to buy the club in April 2021 from the unpopular Marcus Evans for around £40m and wiping out debts of £100m, Ipswich’s promotions will have been achieved with effectively the same side.

The scorers against Forest Green? They were Sam Morsy and Marcus Harness. Also starting were Leif Davis, Cameron Burgess, Wes Burns, Conor Chaplin and George Edmundson. Those seven made 265 appearances between them in League One and, before this final weekend, have played 242 games in the Championship.

Indeed, astonishingly, 15 players who featured at least 10 times for Ipswich in League One have managed at least

inn thde the same total Championship, with captain Morsy, Davis, Chaplin, Burgess, Harness, Burns and Luke Woolfenden playing more than 30 times in each division. But for injury that number of players would be even higher and represents not just astonishing continuity but also great coaching.

It is essentially, therefore, the same squad and one that came out of League One having cost just £10m. Last summer Ipswich spent a modest £4m but engineered a number of smart loan deals including Chelsea’s Omari Hutchinson and, then, crucially in January, Bournemouth’s Kieffer Moore following injury to George Hirst. Head coach Kieran McKenna favours a powerful centre-forward who can hold the ball up and link play.

Ipswich have done it the hard way. League One was far stronger last season than this — as they battled it out with Plymouth Argyle and Sheffield Wednesday — and it has arguably been the most competitive Championship for years as Ipswich took on Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton, the three clubs relegated from the Premier League, who are flush with their parachute payments of £41m.

Undoubtedly much centres on McKenna. Even in the third tier, despite being in his first management job, the 37-year-old was being tracked by Premier League clubs such as Brighton and Crystal Palace. At the start of this campaign it was widely remarked that if Ipswich did not make it their manager would and Palace eventually did consider the Northern Irishman as a replacement for Roy Hodgson.

Ipswich have given McKenna an environment in which to thrive. While the vision for the club is driven from his office at Portman Road by the demanding chief executive Mark Ashton, who was recruited from Bristol City shortly after the takeover, a visit to the club’s training ground shows how this quickly became McKenna’s domain.

He does not allow Sky Sports News — the staple of football training grounds — to be played on the television screens. Instead there is footage of that day’s training session, always filmed by a drone, or highlights from a recent match. This is to get the message across. Players glance up and what do they see? They see their work and its consequences.

McKenna had two Desso (hybrid grass) pitches installed and moved them closer to the first-team buildings, which have been updated. He switches players from one pitch to the other in training — with each exercise immaculately set up and organised by him — to make sure no time is wasted and the tempo remains.

McKenna’s work is based on what he calls a “drill library of practices” and, over the years, he has meticulously documented his training sessions. It is not unusual but McKenna is known to take it to incredibly detailed levels with a huge database.

Afterwards McKenna and his staff, which includes assistant Martyn Pert and first-team coach Lee Grant, always hold a debrief. A senior player, Sone Aluko, joins them. The 35-year-old forward has played just two minutes of first-team football this season but is heavily involved and is one of 10 players who have asked to take their coaching badges, working from the under 10s to under 16s, which has helped the squad evolve.

McKenna has encouraged this and not least because of his own background, coming through at Tottenham Hotspur as a youth team coach, backed by John McDermott, Alex Inglethorpe and Clive Allen after his own playing career was sadly cut short by a chronic hip injury at 21. “I went straight from crutches to coaching,” McKenna has said.

McDermott, now the Football Association’s technical director, certainly identified something in McKenna who then, interestingly, set along a path to be a manager by the age of 35. Why then? It is usually when a playing career comes to a close.

His schooling at Spurs and after that, with United under Jose Mourinho, was exemplary. It helps that McKenna is a self-confessed workaholic but his attention to detail is that of a top manager and always has been. It is a thoroughly modern approach.

For example, after promotion last year McKenna identified that the Championship is the third highest in Europe for sprints and high-speed distance. League One was third lowest. So he worked on how he could improve the speed of his squad and brought in quicker players.

Then he looked at average League One ball-in-play time, which was just 48 minutes in the third tier. For Ipswich’s first Championship game, against Sunderland, it climbed to 67 minutes. So that was another area to work on and to help, Ipswich last summer dug up their pitch, laying proper irrigation channels, undersoil heating and sprinklers as part of the latest multi-million investment phase.

“We like to be thorough in understanding things,” McKenna said and that included a detailed analysis of the “physicality” and athleticism of his squad to work out whether they could cope in the Championship — plus still possessing the technical ability his attacking football demands.

“We needed to be able to rest in possession a little bit which was not something we focused on in League One because we were so dominant in possession,” McKenna explained.

Ipswich is the perfect fit even if, naturally, there was something of a gamble involved when McKenna was chosen to succeed Paul Cook in December 2021 (when he was, indeed, 35) with the club 12th in League One. But his time at Spurs and United taught him not just what it is like to work under pressure — and there was pressure and expectation at Ipswich also — but to be at a club that values youth development and what he calls a “local core”.

With that in mind, while much attention has focused on Davis, who has even been mooted as an England left-back, one of McKenna’s biggest successes has been Woolfenden, the Ipswich-born centre-half who came through the club’s academy and is now heading for the Premier League as a stalwart of the team. Under Cook, Woolfenden had been frozen out, was training with the under-23s and would have left.

But McKenna saw something as Woolfenden said he needed “a bit of love”. The 25-year-old missed only that Forest Green game in 2022 due to illness and the head coach has spoken of how important it is to have a player who knows Ipswich’s “journey”.

“This is a progressive club and I know that I want to manage at the highest level of the game,” McKenna said. “I want to be back to that level, back to the Premier League and manage in the Champions League.” Now he and Ipswich are back.

When Bernie died on August 2, 2021, the impact on Jimmy became a powerful manifestation of profound loss. While battling to cope with life without her, he felt forced to admit: “Not a day goes by when I don’t shed some tears, I miss her so.”

Thirteen and a half months had elapsed since her passing when I called to the family home in Skerries. It was September 22, 2022, which also happened to be the day he saw his counsellor for the last time.

“I had an appointment with her for last week, but I forgot,” he said. Which prompted her to suggest: “That’s a good sign. You won’t need me any more. You’re fine.” Sadly, the counsellor didn’t know her patient sufficiently well to recognise that this was a long way from the truth.

Towards the end of November 2023, he was leaving the home of his daughter Clare in Balrothery, when it struck her that he was unusually quiet. “I would normally walk him out to the car with Seamus [Jimmy’s dog],” she recalled.

“Are you all right?” she asked him. He broke down in tears. Despite laying his hands on the roof of the car, he began to lose his balance, prompting Clare to put her arms around him to keep him upright. With help, she then got him back inside her house where a nurse friend came around and examined him over a cup of tea. As Clare put it: “On being reassured that he was going to be OK, my friend could identify the problem. He was just heartbroken; waiting to die.”

Before departing, however, she insisted on Jimmy taking a few steps, to satisfy her that he was going to be all right. But when she stepped away from him, he collapsed. That’s when she called an ambulance and got him to Beaumont Hospital. He was there only a few hours, however, when he was released. An examination of bloods and vital signs indicated that there was nothing physically wrong with him.

His older daughter, Bernadette, had been given the same message after a similar episode. “They could find nothing wrong with him,” she said. “Every specialist under the sun has examined him but they can find nothing the matter.”

If love is the greatest gift a parent can give their offspring, the four children of Jimmy and Bernie Kinsella felt truly blessed.

Bernadette was their second. Named after her mother, but by way of differentiation, I quickly learned that she is not to be shortened to Bernie.

“They were always very close,” she said of her parents. “When he’d be gone a little while to the golf course, she’d say to me, ‘You’d better go and look for him. He could be dead in a ditch.’ She always appeared to be worried about him. ‘Feck him anyway’ was as far as she’d go, by way of disapproval.

“He never had a mobile phone and she’d talk about him being off pouching for balls. Pouching was a word she liked and we knew what she meant. They went everywhere together, at home and abroad. It could be away in Florida or Malaga, or here in Ireland, perhaps in Waterville.”

I wondered about the impact their romantic closeness had on her, as a woman. Her sister Clare, for instance, said they reminded her of the elderly couple played by James Garner and Gena Rowlands in the 2004 movie, The Notebook. You could certainly imagine tears being prompted by a closing scene in a nursing home ... “Duke [Garner’s character] sneaks into Allie’s [played by Rowlands] room in the night. She instantly recognizes him, they kiss, and fall asleep holding hands. They are found in the morning, having died peacefully in each other’s arms.”

That didn’t quite happen for Jimmy and Bernie, but the idea of it clearly moved Bernadette. “I couldn’t believe they remained so much in love at such a late stage of their lives,” she said. “But there was nothing smoochy or excessive about it. Nothing embarrassing. It wasn’t an act. This was natural, genuine love.

“Later on, as mammy became more immobile, I’d be there to look after her when daddy would leave the house. She’d give him a kiss. ‘Will you be long, Jimmy?’ And he’d say he was giving someone a lesson. ‘Ah! That won’t take long.’

“There was always a waiting list of women anxious for golf lessons from daddy. This led to an ongoing joke whereby mammy would be ribbed about his popularity. But she invariably ignored the innuendo. ‘It won’t take him long,’ would be her standard comment, not realising we were having her on. To my mind, daddy is a very handsome man but she was never jealous. Not even at the way women might look at him in the golf club. He was her Jimmy and that was it.”

When his beloved Bernie was 91, Jimmy decided to hold a special birthday get-together for her, even though it was April 2020 and serious Government restrictions were imposed to curb the spread of Covid 19. So it had to be a family affair, with the addition of a few neighbours. As Jimmy pointed out: “Bernie never liked fussing, anyway. She was a very private person.”

By late afternoon, Jimmy figured that it was then safe to put a secret plan into action.

“When they had all left, I knew what I wanted to do. I had already shared the plan with my youngest, Clare, who’s a bit of a divil like myself. ‘I’m going to put mammy on the bike’. I told her ‘and you can help me.’

“So she and I brought Bernie out and we lifted her onto the little Honda Four. And through it all, Bernie went along with everything. She was great like that.”

For Clare and Jimmy, the success of this little episode was based on something Bernie had once said, “As a couple, Jimmy and I never grew up.” And Clare was conscious of the others knowing nothing about it.

So it was that with his 91-yearold wife on the Honda, 80-year-old Jimmy sped down the estate, though Bernie had urged her husband: “Jim

my! Don’t go too hard.” And he had assured her: “Don’t worry, Bernie. I won’t.” After a few hundred metres, Jimmy eased down on the throttle and turned around.

By the time they arrived back at the house again, a sprinkling of neighbours had emerged to clap and cheer this remarkable couple. Jimmy’s verdict? “It was the perfect way to end a great day.”

He went on: “When we got Bernie off the bike, she was smiling and laughing. She never had any fear of a bike and this, her last spin, wasn’t going to be any different. It would never have crossed her mind that she shouldn’t be engaged in such antics at her age.”

Given the would-be impromptu nature of the exercise, it goes without saying that it was done without a helmet by either the rider or the pillion passenger. “Bernie never wore one,” insisted Jimmy. “Maybe a hat or a scarf.”

Clare retains fond memories of that special occasion, not least because she had the presence of mind to make a video of it. “They’re beautiful pictures,” she said. “My mother always told me I was daddy’s pet and I like to think we have a special relationship.”

Her memories of the day are: “With Covid restrictions, I remember we were anxious not to put mammy and daddy at any health risk. A carer was present and we gathered outside the front window where we had cake and buns and tea. And we all sang ‘Happy Birthday’.

“It was a happy occasion. Though my mother had mild dementia, she wasn’t medically sick, and daddy just loved caring for her. He was always so proud of her. During the days building up to the occasion, he had mentioned that he wanted to get mammy on the motorbike to mark her birthday. Nobody thought it was a good idea, but my reaction was whatever he felt would make her happy.

“When people began to drift off, I asked him if he was going to go ahead with his plan. Not only was he determined to go through with it, he had selected the Honda because it would be easier to get her on a small bike. Mammy was laughing at it all. She loved going on the bike, right back to when they were young.”

So it was that Jimmy got on the Honda and Clare and her husband lifted Bernie onto the pillion. And seeing that neither of them was wearing a helmet, Clare recalled a cousin of hers recounting how Jimmy’s mother, Kathleen, had reacted on seeing her son riding past the house without a helmet. “She would ring our house and give out to my mother for letting daddy out without a helmet. For all the good it did.”

In the event, she was left with images of the wind in her mother’s hair on that gentle trip up the estate and back. And neighbours applauding the madness of it all.

Most of all, she remembers her mother’s laughter. And the way the episode would have revived for her parents their love of travelling round the country on motorbike trips. And she thought how brilliant it was that they were still able to enjoy such an escapade at that late stage of their lives.

Bernie would laugh about the 10-year age gap between herself and Jimmy. Mind you, she could afford to do so after they had spent the guts of a lifetime together. From the outset, however, her family had warned her not to marry Jimmy and though she effectively ignored them, age remained a significant issue. The fact is that they were blessed that Bernie lived such a long, reasonably healthy life, until she died at 92 having four children along the way, despite being 36 when they married.

Still, the issue was eventually confronted when, as one of six siblings, Bernie began to lose her sisters. How could that be happening when they were so much younger than you, mammy, she was asked. “That’s when she told me,” said Bernadette. “As far as I can remember, she was 69 at the time, which meant that daddy was 59.”

The notion of age being just a number meant that the family had no difficulty in accepting the situation, because Bernie remained so youthful in her way. But ultimately, ill-health intervened.

Three years before she died, Bernie had to be hospitalised with a stomach ache which turned out to be a perforated bowel. She was 89 and continued to behave mischievously in front of her children, making light of it all when she returned home two weeks later.

Then came a long-threatened hip replacement in Cappagh Hospital. This time, her stay there was only four days. Then she endured a mini-stroke, which shook her somewhat, for the way it affected the use of her right hand. But as Bernadette pointed out, being ambidextrous helped her to cope.

“After the bowel problem, we wrapped her in cotton-wool and relieved her of all her household chores,” said her second daughter. “Then, in what proved to be her final illness, she developed a very bad cough and could barely breathe. It was Tuesday July 19, 2021, when she was taken into Beaumont.”

Jimmy found it extremely difficult to cope with all of this, even when Bernadette brought him into her own home, the one-time bungalow home of Jimmy’s parents, about half a mile from his current abode. On a particular visit he made to Beaumont a nurse answered Bernadette’s phone-call as to how her parents were getting on. In a scene straight out of The Notebook, she was told that the two of them were asleep together, and he had his head on her pillow.

Typically, the family rallied around him for what proved to be 13 days before the end came.

When she died at 6.10 on the evening of August 2, Jimmy was sitting in a chair to the left of her bed. The family took turns at looking after him through what was an extremely distressing time. At the funeral, they joined together in ‘Angel of God’, a prayer their mother had taught her children, almost before they could speak.

All of which was typical of the Irish way of grieving. In those moments of great loss, they sought comfort in their shared spirituality, in a belief that God had taken Bernie to a better place. “A mammy is a mammy for life,” reflected Jimmy, “and in that most difficult situation, I knew Bernie was looking after me.”

She was buried on the Friday. And after visiting the grave two days later with her two children, Bernadette asked her dead mother for a sign whereby she could assure Jimmy that she was fine. “Just for daddy,” she pleaded.

“With that, I fixed the flowers on her grave. Then noting that one of them was crooked, I bent to straighten it. Suddenly, at the top of my left thumb was a little white ball, like a miniature golf ball, which I picked up. And turning to my daughters, Mary and Alice I asked them if it had been there a moment ago. And they replied, ‘No mammy’.”

Bernadette then talked of the way sunlight reflected through this translucent little piece of granite. She took it as the sign she had sought. And she brought it home where it now sits on her mantelpiece.

Links of Love: How Golf Brought Jimmy and Bernie Kinsella Together is published this week, priced €20 (£20). It’s available from Bobby Kinsella, professional, Skerries GC (01-8491567 or bobkins05@yahoo.ie).

They were always very close. When he’d be gone a little while to the golf course she’d say to me, ‘You’d better go and look for him. He could be dead in a ditch.’