Lawrence Shankland is likely to return for Heart of Midlothian in this weekend's Scottish Premiership clash with Livingston.

The striker sat out of Saturday's 2-1 win over St Mirren in Paisley due to illness. He had trained the day before the match but became unwell on Friday evening. 

Shankland revealed there was a bug that had impacted the squad. Beni Baningime missed the St Mirren game due to illness while Stephen Kingsley was impacted as well.

“I’m all good, fully recovered," he said. "It was just a wee illness in the camp, but it was nothing to worry about, I’m all good.”

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The 28-year-old was speaking at the launch of this year’s McDonald’s Fun Football programme, available to all children aged 5-11 across Scotland. He opened up about his journey to becoming a Scotland international and starting against the Netherlands in the Johan Cruyff Arena.

“It’s good when you look back," he said. "I’ll reflect on it more at the end of my career than I do now. But you take notice of the hard work you have done to put yourself in the position I have.

“When I look back to Morton that was probably the lowest point of my career, I wasn’t enjoying my football at all, I wasn’t playing well and it was a difficult time for me. But the best thing is how much I learned from then and that I managed to kick on.

“Back in those days, if you’d told me I’d hit the bar in Amsterdam playing for Scotland I’d have taken that all day!"