Handling it well: Hearts heavy after Celtic penalty and now wary of Paradise loss

Having viewed the incident that led to Celtic https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/13/scottish-premiership-motherwell-celtic-match-report">being awarded a spot-kick against Motherwell more often than we’ve put on socks, Football Daily still can’t understand how referee John Beaton arrived at his decision.

Of course we’ve seen all the freeze-frame stills on Social Media Disgrace that suggest the ball probably did hit Sam Nicholson’s forehead-adjacent paw, but even then it doesn’t automatically follow that it was a foul.

The power and trajectory with which the ball was sent back out over the touchline was clearly generated by the Motherwell defender’s big slab-head and not some overarm serve borrowed from the volleyball court.

More crucially, what has also become abundantly clear in the ensuing frenzy of hysterical debate over whether or not Nicholson handled the ball, is that in initially declining to award Celtic a penalty the referee definitively did not make a clear-and-obvious error.

It was not until he was sent to his screen by the curtain-twitchers in McStockley Park that Beaton messed up, by electing to re-referee an incident he’d already adjudicated in a perfectly satisfactory manner.