‘There were people with bottles and beer waiting to throw them at me’ – McCarthy reflects on his Town exit

Mick McCarthy covered Ipswich's game with Blackburn for Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday show. Picture: SKY SPORTS (Image: Archant)

McCarthy faced vitriolic abuse from a section of Town fans during the 1-0 defeat at Griffin Park – the impact exacerbated by the fact he had to walk right past them to get to the dressing room at half-time and full-time.

The 59-year-old, who had already announced he would be leaving the club at the end of the season, decided then that the home match against Barnsley three days later would be the final game of his five-and-a-half years in charge at Portman Road.

“I got asked to leave via the back door at Brentford because there were people with bottles and beer waiting to throw them at me,” he told the Irish Daily Mail.

“Of course me being me, I said to the police ‘f*** em, I’m going out the front door’. They said ‘well, if you do we might get covered in beer; we might get hit with bottles’.

Ipswich Town fans in the two-tier away stand at Griffin Park. Photo: Pagepix (Image: Pagepix Ltd.07976 935738)

“I don’t know if there was one person or 20 people or 100. But I had to go out the back door.

“I spoke to (owner) Marcus Evans then. Barnsley was always going to be my last game.

“But it would have been nice to go out and say ‘thanks for everything, it’s been great’, rather than ‘well, what do you think about being booed?’ So I said ‘thankfully I won’t have to listen to it again’ and I did one’.”

Asked whether he received hate mail during his time at Town he says his personal assistant dealt with his post and shredded anything abusive.

“Why on earth would I read it?” added McCarthy, who has carried out media work for Sky Sports and TalkSport at the start of this campaign and is now starting a new role as a pundit for Virgin Media Sport.

Asked why he is keen to get back into management given how his time at Ipswich ended, he replied: “Because we love it. I want to do it again. I have no desire to rest on my laurels. That’s what I enjoy doing.

“I have to say I enjoy the combative nature of it. I enjoy the managing of players and solving problems, both on the pitch and off the pitch, dealing with all the things that come with it, and sometimes the s*** and sometimes the glamour of it. I’ve had more of the glamour than the s***, I have to be honest.”