Collins: “I am no cheat!”

James Collins has broken silence on claims he was play acting after the ball hit his hand on Sunday.

TV pundit Niall Quinn accused the Welshman of cheating to avoid a penalty decision going against West Ham.

Collins said “I think the fans thought I was trying to blag it by holding my head, but I wasn’t.

“I was holding my head because, in the same incident, I stayed on the floor and I think he slid in behind me and I took a knee in the back of the head. That’s why I was down, not because I was trying to say the ball had hit me in the head.

“The ball certainly did hit my hand, but I didn’t intentionally handball it.

“To be honest, he had a shot and I just tried to chuck my body in front of it. If you look closely, you can see I didn’t deliberately handball it. I just couldn’t get out of the way.”

Asked whether he is likely to play for Wales in Euro 2016 Collins answered:

 “I can’t afford to think ahead to Wales – I need to concentrate on my club form.

“I am out of contract in the summer, and I need to look at performing well and that will obviously be good for me in terms of my Wales opportunity too.”

“We are grinding out results, and although we are not scoring or winning we are picking up points.

“We are creating chances, even though everybody knows we are missing some of our creative players and goal scorers.”

“If we’d just had three defeats rather than three draws we would be talking a bit differently, but we are still confident and we feel that over the busy Christmas period there are games we believe we can win.”