Scotland call-up wasn't something Falkirk goalkeeper Scott Bain had considered when leaving Celtic

Falkirk goalkeeper Scott Bain admits a Scotland recall never entered his head when he decided to move on from Celtic.

The 33-year-old was this week named in Steve Clarke’s squad for the World Cup qualifying group finale as Scotland prepare to take on Greece and Denmark.

The former Dundee player won the last of his three caps in a 2-0 success over San Marino in March 2019 but a space opened up when Angus Gunn suffered a knee injury.

Bain has revived his first-team career with Falkirk after making only eight appearances in the previous four seasons with Celtic.

And international honours were far from his mind despite Scotland’s struggle for fit goalkeepers during the summer, which saw the man who replaced him as Celtic’s third-choice keeper, Ross Doohan, handed an unlikely debut in the friendly win over Liechtenstein.

“If I’m honest with you, I don’t think at that time I really thought about it,” Bain said ahead of Saturday’s William Hill Premiership clash with Livingston.

“I had so much going on from leaving Celtic to figuring out what I wanted to do and figuring out where I wanted to go. That wasn’t really a thought in my mind at that moment.

“It was all just about getting regular games, get playing again. I really wanted to see if I still had the desire and hunger and, thankfully, after a couple of weeks I knew that I did. I still had that fire in the belly as they say and wanted to improve and be better.

“And over the course of the pre-season weeks I got my eye back in and I felt really good and really comfortable.

“I don’t think it came into my mind really that it was going to be a possibility until I put together five to 10 good performances.

“Obviously it was spoken of a little bit before the last camp and I thought maybe this is something that I can push towards.

“But it’s something I really tried to not waste a lot of energy on, because we have such a big project here. And when I leave here I’ve got a two-year-old at home so there’s not much time there to think about anything else other than chasing him around, trying to keep him alive at times!

“But I think maybe, from the last camp to this camp, I tried to really focus in on my performances and sort of push towards it.”

Clarke declared the number one jersey up for grabs following Gunn’s injury and, in contrast to recent years, Bain is the option with the most game time. Hearts goalkeeper Craig Gordon and Rangers keeper Liam Kelly have only mustered one game between them this season.

Bain said: “If Craigy doesn’t play regularly I don’t think it’s going to make a difference to him at this stage in his career. He knows the game inside out, he knows what he needs to do.

“But it’s exciting to go in and the manager having said that. My focus will be to go in and represent myself the best that I can and represent Falkirk the best that I can and do what I can do in training to push towards that.

“And whatever the decision is and whatever my role will be when I’m away, I’ll do it to the best of my abilities.”