Hands up who could pick Scott McDonald out of a line-up. Or tell us what number he wears on his shirt. How about how many goals he’s scored this season?

We’re willing to guess unless you’re a hardcore Celtic fan or one of the McDonald clan in Melbourne, you’d struggle to get three out of three.

The strange situation for Celtic striker Scott McDonald is you have one of the most lethal goalscorers in Europe – on league form anyway – who’s more recognised on the streets of Glasgow than in his hometown of Melbourne.

With Aussie fans only able to see him play if they have pay TV or if they watch a Celtic Champions league match on SBS, McDonald arguably has more fans in his adopted country than in Australia.

“It’s not that strange a situation because I spent a lot of my teenage years playing abroad,” says the 24-year-old when asked about his relative anonymity.

“I’ve not really been familiar to the Australian public since probably 1999 when I played for the U17 team that made the final of the Youth World Championships in New Zealand. After that I went straight overseas and got a contract with Southampton, so since I was 16 I haven’t lived or played in Australia regularly.”

Snapped up this off-season by boss Gordon Strachan – who had previously released McDonald when they were both at Southampton – he has been in phenomenal form for the Scottish champions, scoring 14 goals in 18 starts as well as snatching the winner in the Champions League against AC Milan in October.

It’s just a shame us Aussies don’t get to see him a bit more. Until now, that is. We caught up with the man they call “Skippy” but we prefer to simply call “McSocceroo”.

You grew up in Melbourne with your Scottish parents. Was it a football friendly household?
I remember that the first present I was ever bought was a football – one of those stuffed ones – by my dad. Eventually my mum had to hide it from me and my brothers because we kept kicking it and breaking things around the house. So football was with me from an early age.

The first team I ever played for was called Doveton Soccer Club which is pretty close to my family, as it’s where my parents got married and my dad also played for them.

I remember I was about five years old and my parents had bought me some football shorts to wear and they absolutely swamped me. These things were basically down to my ankles and people were laughing at me and making jokes. That’s my first football memory.

I always played in an older age group and I ended up playing first team football at the age of 15 at Cranbourne in division one in the Melbourne leagues before moving to the Victorian Institute of Sport.

Who were your early influences?
I would have to say my family and my dad especially. He was the coach of the teams I played for up until I was about 12 and at that point he felt it was time to let go of me and let me find my own path.

As a parent I don’t think he wanted to be seen as biased towards me and I was doing well at the time so he let me go off and let someone else coach me. Stan Webster was my coach after that for quite a lot of years and he was quite successful with a lot of clubs in Melbourne.

You came to the attention of most Aussie football fans at the 1999 Youth World Championships. That must have been a great experience?
Yeah, other than being really disappointed about losing the final on penalties and being so close to winning it, it was great to be in such a big tournament. We must have spent three months together leading up to it and we really built a strong team spirit.

We were away in South America, Bahrain, Qatar playing football and I was just a young boy. We had a really tight knit group there that helped us be successful.

My biggest memory was playing in the final in Auckland in a full stadium with the likes of Beckenbauer, Blatter and Pelé in the crowd. And we were playing against Brazil and the likes of Adriano at the time. It was amazing.