IPSWICH Town will play their 300th Championship game against Nottingham Forest on Monday afternoon.

They are one of five teams to play in every season of the Championship along with Cardiff, Preston, Coventry and QPR.

Since the First Division turned into the Championship in 2004/05, Ipswich have had three managers with Joe Royle up to May 2006 and then Jim Magilton until April 2009.

Roy Keane has been in charge since and recently released statistics show that the calendar year of 2010 has been Town’s best since 2004.

And skipper David Norris has revealed how important it was for the players to stay together during a six-game losing league run that was ended with the 3-0 victory over Leicester City on December 18.

The Blues have not played since then, and return to action on New Year’s Day at Coventry City with a 3pm kick-off.

“We said during the run that one victory could prove to be the turning points,” said Norris.

“And although we’ve had to wait to see if we could achieve this because of an icy Christmas period we sure we can now kick on.

“We knew that at the end of the day if we stuck together things would change.

“We had control of matches, but unlike against Leicester we failed to score when we were on top.

“How well you play in the first period means nothing - it is the result that is all important and we knew that the longer the run went on the harder it would be to get out of trouble.

“We haven‘t had the best of luck in recent weeks either, but you hope things will even out.“

Norris had praise for fans who have stuck with the players and now wants to give them good cheer after they missed out on their traditional Boxing Day football because of a part frozen Portman Road pitch with the Watford game being postponed 90 minutes before the scheduled kick-off.

“Our fans have been brilliant and the Christmas period is when they turn out in numbers,“ added Norris.

“As players we have to be careful over what we eat etc, but we enjoy it as well and we missed the atmosphere of two big matches over the recent Bank Holiday period.”

Records of Championship 100 per centers (not including Cardiff and Preston‘s games yesterday):

Preston: P297 W117, D81 L 99 F389 A363 Pts432.

Cardiff City: P298 W115 D87 L96 F397 A347 Pts 432.

Ipswich Town: P298 W111 D 88 L99 F404 A381 Pts 421.

QPR: P299 W99 D91 L109 F 360 A380 Pts 388.

Coventry: P300 W95 D81 L124 F 345 A415 Pts 366.