Clarke hails his 6-goal heroes
Clarke: Goal feast has put smile back on my boys’ faces
STEVE CLARKE saw his side smash San Marino at rain-lashed Hampden and admitted his players were finally smiling again after the misery of Moscow.
A first-half hat-trick from John McGinn and second-half goals by Lawrence Shankland, Stuart Findlay and Stuart Armstrong saw Scotland erase the misery of a 4-0 thrashing in Russia last Thursday.
Clarke said: “Hopefully this win repairs a little bit of the fragility that was in the squad
FROM BACK PAGE after the four games against top opposition. We lost all four games. It was a difficult run of fixtures and I knew that when I took the job.
“To come out and get a game like this at home means everyone can leave with smiles on their faces.
“I see smiles in the dressing-room after the game. It’s nice to see and the players deserve credit for bouncing back.
“They did everything I asked of them tonight.
“They also showed me that they have a resilient streak.
“It has been a tough week for us and it was important that we won the game tonight and it was important that we won well.
“And by the way, 20,000 people, everyone told me there was going to be no attendance!
“There were a lot of young ones there and they have seen their national team score six goals at home so hopefully they will want to come back to the next game.
“If this is the first stage in turning the corner then that’s great.
“I see Russia went to Cyprus and won 5-0. I told you that they were a good team.
“We go to Cyprus now with the chance to win the next game and go above them so that would give us an opportunity to finish third in the group which is also an objective.”
Clarke insisted he knew before a ball had been kicked at Hampden that his players were in the mood to make some sort of amends for their recent hammerings by Russia and Belgium. He added: “I knew before the game when we were doing the prematch that we had a group of players that was completely focused on what they had to do out there.
“They were focused, they started quickly and they moved the ball well.
“We got the three goals in the first half which was great because the conditions got more tricky in the second half.
“It would have been very easy for us to just slow down and see the game out at 3-0.
“But we kept pushing and pushing and pushing because we wanted to get a few goals and make sure we left this camp with some positivity for the next two games.”
There were fears the French officials might be forced to abandon the match as conditions deteriorated throughout a second half played in torrential rain.
Clarke said: “I didn’t really think it would get to that stage.
“For European games I’ve ever been involved in it takes something really, really bad for the referee to stop a game.
“The ball was still moving well enough.
“There were bits of the pitch that were very sticky but we dealt with it, we got the six goals and 6-0 is a decent result.
“It’s not very often a Scottish team will score six goals.”
San Marino boss Franco Varrella said: “It was a predictably tough match and the conditions underfoot made it even more difficult to cope.
“The ball seemed to be bouncing in the second half. Sure, if the match had been abandoned against that Scotland side it would have been a good result for us. But all in all the conditions were not bad enough to merit that.”