WE’LL TAKE A DIG

JAMES Ward- Prowse says England should embrace the dark arts after he was accused of cheating at the end of their 1- 0 win over Iceland.

England’s Mr Rotivator ap appeared to twist his studs int into the p penalty spot b before B Birkir B Bjarnason sen sent his kick, whic which would h have earned Icleand a draw, ballooning over the bar in added time.

ITV pundit Roy Keane, above, accused him of “cheating” and

added: “I don’t like to see that”. However Ward- Prowse was defended by Ian Wright.

The former England striker, below, said, “If that happens in a major competition and England get something from it, I’m not going to complain.”

The player himself tiptoed around his spot of bother rather more carefully than he had managed to step around the small white circle in the Laugardalsvollur pitch.

But he was certainly not ashamed of any of the skulduggery, insisting: “It wasn’t any digging of the spot, it was more just delaying the penalty. “It was a bit of a mad few minutes. “We’d just scored obviously y what we thought was the he winning goal and then we faced the e penalty.

“So it was more a delaying tactic just for everyone to get their heads together and prepare for the penalty.

” Thankfully it went in our favour. “There are certain scenarios in a game and you have to take yourself out of the situation and see what is best at that time.

“It is something that we at club level have employed. We’ve learned a lot with that so I think it’s just something that has been added to my game.

“We maybe had the reputation of being a bit too nice and we have maybe had to show a bit more aggression and a bit of that darker side in order to help us win games.

“It’s just something that I have learned along the way.

“And it’s something which we can all take forward, for sure. It’s an important factor in the modern game.”

The late drama came just minutes after Raheem Sterling had scored from the spot to give England the lead, despite Gareth Southgate’s team having been reduced to 10 men following Kyle Walker’s sending- off for a second bookable offence.