Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy says he rejected the chance to interview for the Nottingham Forest job prior to becoming Ipswich Town boss in 2012.

The Blues could relegate Forest to League One in a season-finale at The City Ground on Sunday lunchtime (12pm, Sky Sports), with Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers also in the dogfight.

After being sacked by Wolves in February 2012, several Championship clubs came calling for McCarthy – including Blackburn and Forest.

He explained: “I had a phone call (from Forest) and they asked me if I’d go and have an interview and I said no.

“I wouldn’t go for an interview.

“It said in the paper, on Saturday morning while I was in Portugal, that Mick McCarthy was coming back from Portugal for an interview on Monday. I said ‘no I’m not’.

“I wasn’t offered the job, I was asked to go for an interview. Well I don’t want the world to know I was going for an interview. That’s a great recipe for success that isn’t it? They end up telling everybody ‘we’ve turned Mick McCarthy down’. That’s kudos for them, saying they’ve turned down someone who has won the Championship twice. I don’t give people the chance to do that.

“Maybe they wouldn’t (have turned me down), but I didn’t give them the chance.”