Jonson Clarke-Harris on replacing Ivan Toney, that Lincoln game and taking the blame for Hillsborough defeat

He sat down with Posh press officer Phil Adlam for an interview on the Posh Plus service to reflect on his time at the Weston Homes Stadium, one conducted before his move to the Millers had been announced.

REPLACING IVAN

Toney left Posh in a £10 million move to Brentford in August, 2020. Posh paid Bristol Rovers around a million pounds for Clarke-Harris who was seen by the club as a direct replacement.

"As soon as I heard of Peterborough’s interest I was up for the challenge, because of the club’s reputation for developing great strikers who have always scored plenty of goals. I was replacing a striker who has gone on to play in the Premier League and England. He was a goalscoring machine and a great character so the pressure was on.

"And I didn’t score in my first few games and I started to think this wasn’t going to plan for me and the club, but I scored twice in a League One game against Swindon and that got me going. The goals started flowing freely and I became more confident. It helped having some great players around me of course.”

LINCOLN CITY

Posh needed a point from their final two matches to win automatic promotion from League One in Clarke-Harris’s first season the club, but they found themselves 3-0 down with half an hour to play at home to rivals Lincoln City.

“I had a grade four calf strain ahead of that game. In fact I’d been playing through pain for the 6-7 weeks before that match. I was in constant pain and I could barely walk at the end of matches. I was managing myself in training which didn’t always go down well with the manager or teammates, but it was the only way to make sure I could play in matches. I’m sure most other footballers would have headed for the treatment room, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t even like to go in there to say ‘good morning.’

"Anyway we were 3-0 down and the manager just said ‘score the next goal and you never know what might happen,’ and we did and then we scored another one with 15 minutes to go. Tom Hopper then had a great chance to kill the game off for Lincoln, but thankfully he missed a sitter and Sammie Szmodics won a penalty. Dan Butler said something to me as I waited to take it and I knew than I would bury it. I did and then ran the fastest I’d run in four months in celebration as I knew we were up.

"The worst thing about that season was having no fans in the grounds. I wanted to show the Posh fans what I could do in a live situation, but I had a great relationship with them and we all went outside the ground to celebrate with them.”

Clarke-Harris scored 33 goals in his first Posh season, 31 of them in League One which was enough to win the division’s Golden Boot.

CHAMPIONSHIP STRUGGLES

“The next season was tough. The difference in standard compared to League One was huge. We were a confident bunch who felt winning the majority of our home games would see us safe, but the Championship smacked us in the face and I suffered the consequences of taking risks to try and make sure we won promotion the season before. I had to come straight back to work that summer to try and get myself fit as I wanted to be ‘100% Jonno’, but it was hard work and for three-to-four months I was well off it. I just couldn’t get up to speed and I let people down in some respect, but only because I’d pushed myself through pain to try and get us up.

"By Christmas/January time I was finally up to 100% and I felt more comfortable. I competed and scored some goals.”

Clarke-Harris scored 12 Championship goals, eight of them in the second-half of the season.

HILLSBOROUGH

Posh boss Darren Ferguson had left in the February of the 2021-2022 season and been replaced by Grant McCann. McCann made Clarke-Harris club captain, but he departed in January, 2022 and Ferguson returned for a fourth spell in charge.

"It was the biggest confidence boost I’d ever received to be made captain. It was a bit of a shock, but I feel like I’m a natural leader. I like a laugh with the lads, but when it’s time to work, you work.

"We were outside the play-offs when the gaffer came back and I asked him what he thought was possible and he said we could reach the play-offs and win them. I was in from the start and I scored a lot of goals towards the end of the season. It was tough the way it ended though.

“We delivered an amazing performance to beat Sheffield Wednesday 4-0 in the play-off semi-final first leg, but in hindsight I wished we’d won 1-0 or 2-0 as they had nothing to lose at Hillsborough and just threw the kitchen sink at us. If you look back at their season they didn’t play anything like they played against us that night in any other game. They did the opposite of how they usually played and a full Hillsborough didn’t help, nor did conceding an early penalty.

"It was easily the best atmosphere I’ve ever played in and it was relentless for 120 minutes, apart from for about 60 seconds after we scored. It quietened down for a bit then, but then it started up again.

"I have to take it in on the chin though for the game going into extra time. They’d put a lot of balls into our box in the final minutes and we coped well, but I had the chance to clear a ball that would have probably seen the game end. I should have boomed the ball out of Hillsborough, but it was so hard to focus in those frantic moments and I just concentrated on getting the ball away from our goal. It fell to the wrong player though as Barry Bannon with all his quality picked it up and they had Aiden Flint, a tower of a man, in our penalty area.”

Wednesday equalised the aggregate scores in the final minute and went on to win a penalty shootout. Clarke-Harris scored 29 goals that season, 27 in League One to win another Golden Boot.

LAST SEASON

“Hillsborough did set the club up though and without it we wouldn’t have experienced such an enjoyable season as the last one. From that moment the club decided on the path they wanted to take. I didn’t want to leave after the way the previous season had ended. I wanted redemption and I had conversations with the manager. We are always very respectful of each other. He acknowledged I knew how to score goals in League One and he said ‘we’ll see what happens.’

"I had chances to leave. I knew the club had a policy of players entering the last year of their contracts going on the transfer list, but I wanted to see my contract out as I knew what we now had in the building and I wanted to be around it.

"in the end we came up a little short and it was a sad way to go out, but we won a trophy and medals at Wembley which was one of our two targets. It suddenly hit me after the Oxford game that this was the last time I would sit with these lads in this dressing room.

"I've played football I never thought I would play. I’d been used to one type of football before I came here, but now I had to find a way of getting the ball down and passing it on to better players than me! I can honestly say I’ve loved every minute of it, apart from Hillsborough. It’s been an honour to play for the club and I’m proud of what I achieved.”

Clarke-Harris started just 16 League One games last season and made 18 appearances from the substitutes’ bench. He scored nine League One goals and 13 in all competitions for a total of 87 goals in 190 appearances.

His favourite goals were two-yard tap-ins as it meant he’d taken up a perfect scoring position.