Penalty pandemonium sets up Hearts & Celtic showdown for the ages

Five minutes to go and it was all Motherwell. A shot blocked, another shot saved, on the rebound - a goal. When the news hit Tynecastle it was as if Hearts themselves had scored. As you were, then. Celtic would need to win by three clear goals again. Hearts, meanwhile, were making it 3-0 through Blair Spittal. Professional and clinical. Not a trace of the heat getting to them. Everything was coming up maroon. Only, it wasn't. The late penalty sparked pandemonium. The game deep in added time, Sam Nicholson of Motherwell, arm in the air and rising above Auston Trusty. Then, the sight that would have sent a chill up the spine of every Hearts fan - referee John Beaton stopping dead in his tracks with his finger to his ear. VAR on the line. As Beaton made his way back from the monitor and pointed to the spot with an astonishing amount of conviction given the scant evidence of an offence, a voice among the Motherwell fans was picked up on radio: "The game's done," it said. The Scottish FA is probably going to bend over backwards to defend the call - handball when it looked to all the world that Nicholson had nutted it clear with his head - but it was given and it was converted and few could quite believe it. That decision may yet have a profound impact on the destination of the title. We may not have heard the last of this. Future generations might mull this one over. A shocked Motherwell manager, Jens Berthel Askou, said that in no other world would it have been given. …