Motherwell's Callum Slattery says an incident between himself and Hearts star Cammy Devlin was just 'mind games', because both of them knew the hosts' penalty award had been a con.
Slattery reacted angrily in the second half when Devlin went down under the slightest of challenges, with referee David Munro pointing to the spot, much to the delight of most of a bumper crowd at Tynecastle.
However, Liam Boyce's kick was saved by Liam Kelly, keeping the score-line at 2-0 to Hearts.
The 22-year-old says he didn't get a good enough view of the first penalty that Boyce did score - with Stephen Kingsley adding a superb free kick goal - but says the second one was utter nonsense.
Ex-Southampton star Slattery said: "I haven't seen them back. The first one was quite early on and the linesman said no but the referee stuck with his decision.
"The second one wasn't a penalty at all, in my opinion. It was very soft and their players even said it wasn't. I'm just thankful Liam kept it out.
"Things like that happen. I just take it with a pinch of salt. I knew it wasn't a penalty and he knew it. It was just mind games but they didn't manage to score.
"The ref gave the penalty and the linesman was unsure. It was a penalty at the end of the day and we can't can't anything about it."
Slattery says Motherwell had chances, but just couldn't put them away. Tony Watt, Kaiyne Woolery and Juhani Ojala all forced good saves from Craig Gordon, but by that point Hearts were already 2-0 up.
He said: It is always tough going behind so early on and it's tough to get a foothold in the game.
"I felt throughout the game we were pushing and creating chances and just unfortunate not to put any away.
"As you see from the start of the season and run of games we had, the performance wasn't bad. We played some good football and created chances and we just didn't put them away.
"It's nothing to do with the performance or that we didn't play well. We just didn't put the chances away."
The result, which was Motherwell's first defeat in seven games, keeps them in the top half of the Premiership, though, and Slattery is happy with their season so far.
He said: "We are very pleased with where we are. We didn't get the result on Saturday but the performance was there and the results have been good.
"We aren't going to let our heads get down and will bounce back from it by playing exactly the same.
"The manager's mentioned it before. We don't get too ahead of ourselves when we win but we don't get too down when we lose.
"When we win, we stay level headed but when we lose we know there's another game right around the corner.
"You go anywhere and know it's not going to be an easy game. The more points we can pick up and be a handful for the teams we play, it's only going to come in bandy at the end of the season."
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