Matt Holland on Ipswich finishing fifth, beating Inter and relegating Man City

You can still find grainy footage of it on YouTube.

The 39-second clip of Alun Armstong's towering header for Ipswich Town against the mighty Inter Milan.

It might not be the prettiest goal and it might not be packaged in crisp, HD footage with multiple fancy angles but the 1-0 win achieved at Portman Road that night in a UEFA Cup third round first leg clash is a timeless reminder of how much the Suffolk club achieved at the turn of the Millennium.

That Inter blew Ipswich away in the second leg is to miss the point. They were never really going to win the competition but to even be in it, never mind beating a side like the Italians, was a victory in itself.

Sadly for the Tractor Boys, the rollercoaster journey was all-too-brief. They had qualified for Europe by finishing fifth in the 2000-01 campaign - a remarkable achievement for a newly-promoted club. But just 12 months later they were heading back to the Football League - where they have resided ever since.

Matt Holland was a crucial part of the Ipswich engine room between 1997 and 2003 and holds a remarkable record of missing just one league game in all that time (due to international duty). He arrived at a team that was knocking on the door of the Premier League ever since their relegation in 1995. They had fallen at the play-off semi-final stage the season before his arrival and two more near-misses were to follow.

It would, eventually, prove to be fourth time lucky in the 1999-2000 season when they beat Barnsley at the old Wembley to finally reach the top table once more.

Nobody could have foreseen how their first campaign back would unfold. They would finish on 66 points and end up in fifth spot, just three points behind third-placed Liverpool (in the days when only the top three sealed Champions League football).

Their exciting brand of football would not only ensure European football returned to Ipswich for the first time since the early Eighties but they also reached a League Cup semi-final that year.

"If you're an Ipswich fan now and you get told about the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s and the period I was there in getting promoted and playing in Europe, you wouldn't believe those days existed," Holland tells Mirror Football, reflecting on the golden period for the club.

"It was a long time trying to get up. We'd been knocking on the door for some time. It was a gradual building phase under (manager) George Burley, probably three or four years of putting things in place."

That patience and those solid foundations stood them in good stead in that memorable 2000-01 season, and Holland says the fact that there were no 'big time Charlies' within the dressing room as a key factor.

"This was a group that had been together a while," he said. "Everyone knew their jobs but not only that, we were a talented side. We were a team and often people say that 'we're not a team of superstars' and we genuinely weren't. We were a team who got on well, liked each other's company and performed at a consistent level. In terms of stand-out games, one of my favourite that year was when we went to Everton.

"We beat them 3-0 and that was as good as we could be really. It was the perfect away performance. Even the Everton fans applauded us off the pitch at the end of the game!"

Despite their outstanding efforts, Burley's men couldn't quite achieve a top-three finish but they still delivered European football. The result which guaranteed a UEFA Cup spot was a 2-1 win at home to Manchester City - Holland scored the opener - with that loss sealing relegation for the visitors.

Holland adds: "We relegated Man City that day. How things can change, crikey! Joe Royle was in charge and we beat them 2-1 to send them down to the Championship. Liverpool won the last day of the season which meant we couldn't get into the Champions League. If you think now, a newly-promoted team would come up and finish fifth - everybody would say no chance. The quality of the teams and the money spent makes it almost impossible now for a team to do that."

Despite the feelgood factor, like many newly-promoted sides Ipswich struggled to maintain their levels of intensity during the second campaign.

The European games only bloated their schedule and although they fared well on the continent, ultimately it would come at the expense of their top flight form. They would end the campaign 18th, four points shy of safety. Holland says: "The Premier League was a new thing for a lot of us in that first season. It's hard to go again the following year.

"The extra games with Europe meant we maybe took our focus off the Premier League. Recruitment for that second year, I think, was an issue. Maybe one or two players came on wages which upset players who'd been there five or six years. I think that affected us. There was a number of reasons why it all fell apart. For three or four years we'd only ever been going in one direction whereas now it was going the other way."

Despite the pain attached to the 2001-02 season, one abiding memory will be the aforementioned meetings with Inter.

Holland recalls: "Ipswich had never been beaten at home in European competition which is unbelievable so we felt some pressure to try and keep that record!

"That was as good an atmosphere as I've ever witnessed. The noise was incredible and obviously to beat them 1-0 was amazing. "Going away was special too - we took 10,000 Ipswich fans to the San Siro. They beat us comfortably that night. Christian Vieri scored a hat-trick and when he went off the Brazilian Ronaldo came on - that was the level we were playing at."

Now 48, Holland expresses regret that the side could not hang on for a third season in the top tier. Although he will cherish the highs experienced for a lifetime, his only sadness is that they did not last longer.

"Everyone comes to a period where your time is finished and it's time to move on," he reflected. "We did make the most of our period but it wasn't an overnight thing. George took over in 1994 and it was about putting things in place, so it was a long time in the making.

"Sadly for us it unravelled quickly, but it took a long time to get there."