Your shenanigans gave us the time to grab a leveller

Clarke hails his heroes for keeping cool after Georgia's dirty tricks to earn a draw at death

- KEITH JACKSON

STEVE CLARKE last night piled praise on his players for not falling for Georgia's dirty tricks - and insisted his side had the last laugh when Lawrence Shankland bagged an injury-time leveller.

Clarke and his squad were left bristling here in Tbilisi by what he described time-wasting "shenanigans" while Scott as McTominay branded the hosts "cry babies moments after helping salvage a 2-2 draw.

Shankland's late goal stopped a threegame losing streak and secured another Group A point ahead of Sunday's curtain call against Norway at Hampden.

And Clarke could hardly hide his delight at the manner in which the draw was snatched - in the injury time Georgia's antics had piled up as they looked to hold on for a win.

He said: "That's one of the challenges when you come here you know they are going to do whatever they have to do to try to get a positive result and you have to deal with that.

"You have to show you can control yourselves and don't get involved. You can't react to any of the shenanigans.

"And we just kept going, plugging all the way to the end, knowing that there was going to be extra time added on for time wasting. And it was nice to get the goal in injury-time!

"We didn't come here to lose. If you can't win, don't lose. We did that. We showed good character.

Clarke's side got off to shaky start when Napoli Khvicha superstar Kvaratskhelia fired the home side into an early lead.