Town winger Jack Clarke was always confident when stepping over the Blues’ late penalty that earned them a 2-2 draw with fellow promotion chasers Middlesbrough at Portman Road.

Having fallen behind twice, Town came from behind to extend their unbeaten home run to 17 matches and move back into second in the Championship on goal difference.

Boro strikers David Strelec and Tommy Conway scored either side of Kasey McAteer’s equaliser, but it was Clarke’s sixth spot-kick of the campaign that moved Kieran McKenna’s side ahead of Millwall and extended the visitors’ winless run to seven matches.

The Blues’ top scorer took his tally to 15 goals for the season but was left disappointed that Town could not complete the comeback and claim what would have been a crucial victory in their quest for an instant return to the Premier League.

“Thankfully I’ve taken a few this year so nerves don’t magnify in terms of what the scenario is,” Clarke said. “I’m always confident stepping over the ball, I practise them during the week and make my mind up before coming into it.

“If one comes, you’ve got to stick to your thing. If the keeper saves it, he’s done well. If I score, I’ve done well.

“The day before a game, I’ll pick my spot and take two or three just so I know what I'm doing when if the scenario comes. It came today, I stuck to the game plan and scored.

“To be honest, I don’t think about individual things too much. I’d rather score zero but we win every week. On my side of things, I'm trying to do the best for the team. If that’s scoring or not scoring, I'm just trying to do my best every single game.”

The late penalty award was a controversial one as referee Jarred Gillett took his time before pointing to the spot after Adilson Malanda pulled back substitute George Hirst in the box.

Clarke said: “I’m going to say it was a penalty. It’s quite naive from the defender who gives it away. Darnell had a similar one a few weeks back at Watford.

“It depends how you view it, to be honest. There’s probably a lot of defenders that would say it’s not a penalty and he’s not getting to the ball.

“As an attacker, when you get on the wrong side of the defender, you can’t make any contact or you’re walking on a tightrope. You’re just giving the ref a decision to make, some weeks he’ll give it and some weeks he won’t.

“We’ve had it all season but it’s just one of them. Personally, I think it was a penalty whether Hirsty was getting there or not.

“You wanted as much time as possible, but if we’d have scored in the 91st, we’d have wished for four minutes or something like that. The fans did all they could to drive us as long as the game went on and we did as best to try and nick a goal late on, but it just wasn’t to be.”

Town were on top during the first half but were punished for their lack of potency when Strelec’s tap-in from close range put Boro in front against the run of play.

While McAteer’s powerful strike on his weaker left foot brought the Blues level only five minutes later, Clarke felt the biggest disappointment was failing to take a deserved lead into half-time.

“I’ve not fully reflected on it myself yet, to be honest,” he said. “In the first half, we felt like we played really well and we should have given ourselves more of a cushion going into half-time.

“We probably didn’t defend a couple of moments well enough in the first half and second half. They’re a good team, they grew into the game, started playing some good football, put some good moves together and committed a lot of bodies.

“We left ourselves a bit of a hole and we had to show character to get back into the game. That side of things we’re happy with, but based on how we played over the course of the game, we should have had more from it.

“Hopefully it’s not a bad point come the end of the year, but we set our sights coming into the game and getting back on that winning train. A bit disappointed on that side, but hopefully it’s a good point come the end of the year.

“We’ve always been perform first, take care of what we can take care of, and hopefully the result takes care of itself. Sometimes there’s things outside of our control that we can’t do.

“We let ourselves down massively on Tuesday night and we knew that coming into today. Everybody could agree that the performance today was a lot better than it was on Tuesday [against Portsmouth], and we still didn’t get as much as what we deserved from the game.

“Sometimes it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we try and take care of what we can take care of and hopefully by the end of the year it will come good.”

Town still need nine points from their final four matches to guarantee promotion to the Premier League, with a trio of away matches on the horizon that concludes with a visit to a Southampton side in red-hot form.

Wednesday evening’s trip to Charlton Athletic is the next chance to return to winning ways after a run of two matches without victory since the derby day success at Norwich City last weekend.

Clarke said: “When you draw any game, it’s always a bit up in the air of ‘could we have done more’ or ‘could we have done that’. They’re always the most confusing ones.

“We felt we did more than enough to be in a better position going into the second half. Maybe we didn’t play as well in the second half, they grew and were a good team.

“A draw could be a fair result, we feel like we could have one and they feel like they should have won. You can’t dwell on it too much in this league, we’ve got another game on Wednesday and that’s what we’ve got to get prepared for now.

“We prepare for every game in the same way. No three points is bigger than another three points, they all accumulate to the same thing.

“These were a different sort of opposition in terms of where they are in the league table to Portsmouth, but the three points were still the same. We set up with the same prep for the game and we always do.”

Photo: TWTD