High above the blue sea, Ipswich Town goalkeeper Christian Walton sat on the shoulders of the cheering flood. A short distance away, Dan Neil was also hoist to the skies.
Back in the dressing room, Darnell Furlong lifted Kieran McKenna on to his own while team-mates sprayed champagne over their triumphant leader.
The promotion party had begun.
By the time Kasey McAteer had rolled the ball into the net for Ipswich’s third and set off towards the corner flag five minutes before the final whistle, the army of stewards were already in place. Hundreds of them in their high-viz jackets, lined up in a row across each side of Portman Road. They never stood a chance.
When they eventually cleared the pitch nearly an hour later, the players and staff returned wearing shirts emblazoned with ‘Promoted 26’ on the back. They lifted a trophy – do you get a trophy for second these days? – and celebrated with freshly shaven-headed minority shareholder Ed Sheeran.
Ipswich have returned to the Premier League after securing promotion on the final day of the Championship season
Ed Sheeran posed with fans after his local team secured their return to the top flight
Fans flooded the field of play at Portman Road following the full-time whistle against QPR
In the end, it had been a procession. George Hirst and Jaden Philogene had made it 2-0 inside 10 minutes and while a spirited QPR response had instilled a few nerves, McAteer’s late third secured the Tractor Boys’ swift return to the top-flight.
It meant that they did not need to concern themselves with what was going on elsewhere. No need to keep refreshing the scores. Millwall did all they could, putting away relegated Oxford United. Middlesbrough failed to get the better of Wrexham in a game that could have mattered but, ultimately, none of it did.
Ipswich won and that was enough.
A third promotion in four years. For much of the campaign, it felt as if the pre-season favourites would have to do it the hard way. It was not until a victory at Birmingham five games ago that they moved into the automatic promotion places at all. They took it until the final day but they got there when it mattered.
‘It means a lot,’ said McKenna. ‘It’s probably been the hardest one, if I’m honest. It’s brilliant. I know how hard we’ve had to work to turn it around. As a club we had such a climb and a steep fall. We’ve had to rebuild this team under difficult circumstances and we deserve to be where we are today.
‘It was special to do it back-to-back with basically the same group of players, I don’t think it will ever be repeated again with the way finances are going. This one has been a big challenge. I know how hard we have had to work for it and that it could have gone in completely different direction so I’m proud we kept it together and get it over the line.
‘I could have enjoyed it more if we got the third goal a bit quicker.’
Fans chanted about promotion as blue flares and fireworks were set off into the sky
The players celebrated in the changing room after the game as they secured a return to the top flight at the first time of asking
Jaden Philogene (right) scored Town’s second goal of the 3-0 win on Saturday afternoon
For this is a far different Ipswich to the cavalier outfit that romped to back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League by the seat of their pants, scoring hatfuls of goals and not caring that they were conceding only slightly fewer. Their immediate return to the Championship proved that’s rarely an approach that serves upstarters in the top flight.
Mark Ashton, the club chairman and chief executive, admitted in the summer that the club had gone about it wrong. They hadn’t signed enough players with the physicality and experience to cut in the Premier League.
They are much more pragmatic now. They don’t score as many but they control games better. Even still, it’s been a campaign in which Ipswich struggled to capture hearts and minds after beloved former promotion heroes moved on to be replaced by a new guard trying to find their way together.
Even so, there was still an air of excited confidence around the place before a ball was kicked. You could barely make out the Ipswich team bus as it pulled into Portman Road through the cloud of thick blue smoke from the flares set off to greet them.
When the kind lady who handed out the media passes directed us to the top of the staircase, she smiled and added: ‘the only way is up!’. Club staff were already discussing plans for the inevitable invasion.
Celebrations will go long into the night before prepraration begins for the Premier league
At first it felt like the party was going to start early as Leif Davis was slipped in twice within the first few minutes. He forced a save with the first and fizzed a ball across goal with the second where Hirst, hugely impressive with his hold-up play, tapped in after a goalmouth scramble before setting up Philogene for Ipswich’s second.
Philogene, a £20m signing from Aston Villa last January, could not keep Ipswich up last time around but will be crucial to their hopes of making their new stay a permanent one.
‘This year everyone wanted us to fail but we’ve done it,’ said Hirst. ‘It’s been difficult, we’ve made it hard for ourselves, but who cares, we’re back in the Premier League and that’s all that matters.’
Once the celebrations end, all that will matter is making sure they stay there.
