A visit to Fir Park is one of the toughest tests in Scottish football this season, and Hearts initially looked cautious against fourth-place Motherwell despite Shankland’s early goal-bound shot being brilliantly blocked by Stephen O’Donnell.<\/p>\n
Instead it was Motherwell who took a grip of the game when an incisive move opened space for Emmanuel Longelo to cross and a stranded Kingsley could only divert the ball into his own net.<\/p>\n
Hearts, though, have shown character throughout this unlikely title tilt, coming from behind to win their last three games.<\/p>\n
Kingsley made up for his earlier lapse by finding Michael Steinwender at the back post, and the defender’s wonderful strike was parried to Shankland, who hauled his team level with a composed finish.<\/p>\n
From there a frantic second half unfolded as Hearts lost both Marc Leonard and Craig Halkett to Achilles injuries, but they nevertheless pressed on in search of a winner.<\/p>\n
They thought they had the chance to grab it from the penalty spot when Tawanda Maswanhise appeared to stand on Alexandros Kyziridis’ foot when Hearts took a short corner and referee Steven McLean was called to the monitor. <\/p>\n
However the referee surprised Fir Park by sticking with his original decision of no foul. <\/p>\n
Kyziridis then headed wide from a fantastic position, and although both sides continued to attack, the Greek winger’s chance was the best opportunity to win the game.<\/p>\n
While the draw gives Celtic a chance to narrow the gap to one point on Sunday when they host Rangers, it keeps Hearts’ chance of winning a first title for 66 years in their own hands with two games to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A visit to Fir Park is one of the toughest tests in Scottish football this season, and Hearts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-660608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}