Ipswich Town winger Wes Burns reached a huge milestone in Saturday’s 4-2 win against Preston North End, as it was his 100th appearance for the club in all competitions.
The 28-year-old moved to Portman Road in June 2021, becoming the first face to arrive through the door in the post-Marcus Evans regime.
It took a while for the Blues’ many summer signings to gel, as well as a change of manager, but when it all came together under Kieran McKenna, it quickly became apparent that Town were heading in the right direction.
Burns has played a crucial role in the club’s upward trajectory, and he admitted that reaching the famed ‘100 club’ is a huge moment in his football career.
“What an honour for me to even make an appearance for this club,” he said. “For me to make 100 is something that I never thought I’d do, to be honest.
“When I signed, it was a bit of a whirlwind of what was going on at the club, the new regime and the new people coming in. I was the first face of 20 odd players that we signed that year.
“For me to stick it out and make it to 100 is a very good achievement for me.
“There’s been some bad times and some good times as well, but I think there’s certainly been a hell of a lot more good times in recent years. The club is just growing and growing to places that we could only dream of.
“I know that we keep saying it, but our goal was to get out of League One last year. I think that, without looking too far ahead, there’s goals that we’ve set that we want to achieve this year that we’re well on the way to doing.”
Burns has scored 23 goals since arriving in Suffolk a little over two years ago, with one of them coming in the Championship this season.
Having come close for a number of weeks, he finally got on the scoresheet with a fierce strike in Ipswich’s 3-0 win against Hull City, which he knows has certainly been coming.
“It was good to open my account for the season,” he admitted.
“It was weird because, in the build-up to the game, JD [Donacien] pulled me and said ‘I haven’t seen you shoot from outside the box in ages’. I thought ‘yeah, to be fair, I can’t remember the last time that I had a proper shot from outside the box that was decent.
“When it fell to me, I had JD in the back of my mind saying ‘just hit it’. I caught it sweetly. Lovely. Onto the next one.
“As soon as I hit it, I knew that I hit it clean. I knew that, if I kept it to the side of the defender, the ‘keeper wouldn’t see it until late.”
The post-match scenes were almost as good as the ones on the pitch. Celebrity supporter Ed Sheeran travelled to Portman Road for the game and visited the dressing room afterwards, singing his song ‘Perfect’ with the first-team squad.
“It was so strange,” Burns recalled. “Mark Ashton came in and told us that someone else was doing the team talk. We were all wondering who on earth it was going to be.
“You see Ed on TV and whatnot. He’s a world star, and he just bowls through the door. You don’t really know what’s going on, you’re just starstruck really.
“He’s a humble guy, a down-to-earth guy, a lovely guy. It was a lovely evening.
“For somebody that’s so high-profile to know who we are is a bit of a mad thing, but he’s a proper humble guy.”
The attention now turns to the international break, where Burns is one of six Town players heading out to represent their countries in the next fortnight.
He'll be hoping to earn two more caps for Wales, which would take his total to seven, with a friendly against Gibraltar and a EURO 2024 qualifier against Croatia on the horizon.
Of course, there is a part of everyone that wants to continue playing Championship football while the Blues are in such good form, but Burns knows that the break will give him a chance to turn his attentions to something less intensive.
“When I go away with Wales, it’s refreshing to think about something that isn’t Ipswich Town,” he revealed.
“It’s totally different to league football because we’re trying to qualify for a major tournament. I’ve never been to a major tournament before, so for me to help them get there would be massive. If I could then get there in the summer, it’d be massive for me. It’d be something else that I could tick off my football bucket list.
“It’s quite a bit of a relief to not think about league football and stuff like that. It’s relentless at the moment. We’re playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday all the time. It can be tough on the mental, but it’s something totally different to go away with Wales.
“You see different people, the style of football is different and you’re playing against different types of opponents. It’s refreshing in that sense.”
One familiar face in the squad is Nathan Broadhead, who’s Town’s tied-top scorer with five goals in 11 league games. However, Burns is keen to highlight that they’re very different socially, albeit that everyone sticks together in what is a strong and cohesive group under manager Rob Page.
“Broady keeps himself to himself, to be honest,” he chuckled. “He’s not as much of a social butterfly as me. I get bored very easily, so sitting in my room and watching Netflix isn’t for me. I like to get out and play cards or sit in the physio room, chatting away with people.
“The group is a very tight group. It’s quite similar to the one we’ve got here in the sense that everyone gets on with each other. There’s a lot of lads that are coming from bigger clubs, but you don’t get anyone whose ego gets in their way.
“It’s a very good group and I fit in with everyone, really.”
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