Peterborough United loanee is loving life at London Road, but he's non-committal about his future beyond the end of this season

Centre-back Hughes, who was handed the armband with club captain Hector Kyprianou on international duty, set the ball rolling on a 3-0 win by scoring his first Posh goal and played superbly as his side completed back-to-back clean sheets in League One for the first time this season.

Hughes last scored a goal almost two years ago, also against Charlton when playing for Burton Albion. It’s clear the loanee from Stockport County is loving life at London Road, but he was non-committal about his future beyond the end of the current campaign.

"Days don’t get much better than this,” the 27 year-old admitted in interviews with the Posh Plus service and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. “It was a great performance from minute one and it always seemed just a matter of time before we started scoring. I was delighted to score and credit to Kwame Poku because he put it on a plate for me.

"I am loving it here. I’ve said from day one the aim was to get in the side, stay in the side and help the team as best as I could. I’ve loved every minute as the lads are great and the fans have been different class, but I’m can’t look beyond the end of the season. My focus is on playing as well as I can and helping the team win as many games as I can.

"It helps when you are getting results and this was a good one against a good side. We had a nice 2-0 cushion at half-time, but we knew we would be under pressure for a bit at the start of the second half as they had nothing to lose. We dealt with it well though, limited them to very little and then started to create loads of chances on transition. It took a while to get that third goal to kill the game off and we had to make sure they didn’t nick a goal to get back in it, but once we scored again it was very comfortable for us.

"Oscar Wallin was excellent alongside me. Chuks Aneke is a powerful forward who tended to peel on to Oscar’s side, but he was very clever in how he dealt with him. He didn’t lose anything in the air and stayed aggressive.

“Of course defending starts from the front and I’m just glad Ricky-Jade Jones plays for my team. His work ethic yesterday was different class. He kept winning the ball back for us.”

Posh are next in League One action at play-off chasing Reading (March 29, 3pm) before travelling to relegation strugglers Crawley Town on Tuesday, April 1.