Jonson Clarke-Harris praises his Peterborough United teammates for digging in and completing the perfect Easter

Jonson Clarke-Harris scored his 24th League One goal of the serasin against Exeter City on Easter Monday. Photo: Joe Dent.

Peterborough United captain Jonson Clarke-Harris was pleased to see his side hold their nerve to dig out victory over Exeter on Easter Monday.

Clarke-Harris scored the goal that made the 3-1 victory safe following what had been a half of sustained pressure from the visitors up to that point in the 70th minute.

Exeter had pegged Posh back to 2-1 just a minute into the second half after an Alex Hartridge own goal and Ephron Mason-Clark had set Posh on their way in the first.

The tap-in was Clarke-Harris’s 24th of the league season, putting him five clear of Portsmouth’s Colby Bishop and Ipswich Town’s Conor Chaplin in the scoring charts.

The goal was also his 55th in League One in the last three years, 11 clear of anyone else in that time period, despite spending a season away in the Championship. A wry smile enveloped the striker’s face when he described that as a ‘good stat.’

The better stat for Posh was the three points moved them into fifth, two points clear of both Bolton and Derby.

Clarke-Harris said: “It was a slow start to the second-half, one that we did not need at all. They came out on the front foot and got the goal so early. It pushed us back and a bit of confidence went from us and we had the wind against us so it took us a while to get control back.

“It was tough, we didn’t want to concede another goal and have to chase the game. For that 10-15 minute period, the boys really dug in and then we went and got the goal to kill the game off.

“They were keeping a really high line and the boss said that we had to get runners in between their left and right wing-backs and that’s exactly what the two wide forwards did. Fair play to Ephron for his goal. He’s been shining for weeks and hopefully he keeps tucking those goals away.

“We can only take the positives out of the game as we’ve taken the three points.

“It’s been a good Easter with the three points at Shrewsbury and how we completely dominated them for the whole 90 minutes. Today, for the first 45, it was complete domination again. They didn’t cause us too many problems.

“It’s one game at a time though. We’ve got the derby on Saturday and we look forward to going to Cambridge and trying to get another three points.”