Jay Stansfield gave the newly-promoted hosts the lead with an emphatic rebound finish in the 55th minute but, in a scrappy game that contained 38 fouls, Town salvaged a point in the fifth minute of stoppage-time when George Hirst converted a controversial penalty awarded for handball.
“It was a really intense game in the first half,” said McKenna. “It mostly what we expected.
“It wasn’t great quality, to be honest. Both teams had good intensity, good organisation, but not enough passages of play in the game.
“We had a couple of good chances, maybe the better chances in the first half, but probably less of the play. There was nothing really in the game until the first goal. And after that, we improved. That (going behind) was maybe what we needed to sort of go for the game a little bit more.
“There’s positives in how we battled. It was always going to be a difficult place to come here tonight.
“For sure, we need to impose ourselves on the game earlier than what we did. To be the team that we want to be this year, we have to impose ourselves on the ball better than what we did.
“But the players stuck at it. We had good impact off the bench. And we will be stronger for this game.”
The Blues boss continued: “There’s no doubt in my mind that this game came early for us, to be honest, as a group.
“I think a lot of teams would have come here and lost tonight.
“It wasn’t a fantastic game, we didn’t play as well as we would have liked, but we found a way to battle for a point, which hopefully will be an important one at the end.
“We know there’s a lot of work to do with the group, to be honest. We’ve got some really hard work to do on the training pitch over the next few weeks.
“We have to sort some situations out, get the squad to where it needs to be. But in the meantime, we have to pick up points. And we’ve picked one up tonight in a really hard place.
“If we do the right things over the next few weeks, then I’m certain we’ll play much better than we did tonight. And we’ll be a much stronger team.”
Ipswich’s late spot-kick was awarded after the ball grazed Lyndon Dykes raised arm following a corner delivery. Birmingham boss Chris Davies called it a ‘very, very harsh’ decision.
“I’ve not seen it back,” said McKenna. “Even from the sidelines, 50 yards away, it looked like a defender had an arm sort of raised in a bit of an unnatural position. But that’s honestly me without seeing the replay. So people have had better views than me.”
As Hirst ran off to celebrate, Conor Chaplin booted the ball into the home crowd and then tangled with Birmingham defender Christoph Klarer. Both sets of players clashed near the advertising hoardings and a home fan appeared to swing an arm at Jack Taylor before being tackled by stewards.
On that flashpoint, McKenna said: “It’s just both sets of players being emotional. It was an emotional game, so these sort of incidents can happen. There’s not much to say on it really.
“Jack’s all right. Somebody just showed me the footage. It’s obviously not ideal, but I think it’s been reported. The authorities will deal with it.”