Blues striker George Hirst says his first Scotland call-up and the chance to play international football is a dream come true.
Hirst, 26, was added to the Scotland squad for their two-legged UEFA Nations League play-off against Greece on Sunday, six days after FIFA confirmed his switch of allegiance from England, for whom the Sheffield-born frontman had played at U17, U18, U19 and U20 levels.
"Delighted, a bit of a dream come true, to be honest,” he told the Scotland National Team’s YouTube channel. "The chance to go and play international football.
"My grandad was Scottish and it’s an opportunity to go and make him proud.
"I’ve known for a while that I could play for Scotland and it’s always been a big aim of mine.
"I think I’ve been asked about it in the media at Ipswich over the last year and I’ve tried to bat it off, saying that I’m just going to concentrate on Ipswich, but if I’m being brutally honest it’s always been in the back of my mind.
"[Manager Steve Clarke] dropped me a text and asked for a phone call and we spoke for five or 10 minutes and he said he wanted to know whether I’d be interested in the chance to play for Scotland.
"Obviously, I went to spoke to my partner and my family about it, but straight away I was like, ‘Yeah, this is an opportunity I definitely can’t turn down’.”
Hirst’s father David won three caps and scored one goal for England in the early 1990s but the Sheffield Wednesday legend had no qualms about his son playing for Scotland.
"There wasn’t really much of a conversation, to be honest,” he said. "I mentioned to him that I’d had the phone call and his first words were, ‘Go and do it. Your grandad would be very proud of you for going and playing for Scotland’.
"And that was a big thing for me. He said that his greatest honour in his career was playing international football and he just straight off said, ‘You’ve got that opportunity, go and give it your best shot and see where it takes you’.
"It wasn’t so much a conversation, it was more of me telling him I’d had a phone call and him saying, ‘Yeah, go and do it’.”
Scotland play the Greeks in Piraeus on Thursday and at Hampden Park on Sunday.
If Hirst makes his debut, he will become the fifth Town player to have won senior caps with the Scots, following George Burley, John Wark, Alan Brazil and Christophe Berra.
Blues keeper Cieran Slicker, 22, is also in the squad having received his second senior call, but seems unlikely to get off the bench.