The Thistle Archive

Born to a Scottish family in Australia, Scott McDonald was a boyhood long distance Celtic fan who began his career in his native land with Gippsland Falcons. The striker fulfilled many personal ambitions in his extra-ordinary 24-year playing career, including winning a Scottish title with Celtic in 2007-08 and being capped 26 times for Australia.

He moved to Great Britain in 2001 and subsequently played for a wide range of clubs in England and Scotland, notably Motherwell (two spells), Celtic and Middlesbrough. He really made his name at Motherwell from 2004 to 2007 and famously scored two late goals against Celtic at the end of the 2004–05 season to deny them the Scottish Premier League title which was instead won by their arch-rivals Rangers. He didn't look like much of a Celtic fan that day anyway! Scott was named BBC Sportsound Player of the Year for the 2006–07 season while at Motherwell, and scored the 5,000th goal in the history of the Scottish Premier League (SPL) in November 2006.

It was thought that he'd retired from play in 2018, moving into punditry and media work but, in February 2019, the 35-year-old was tempted out of retirement by his former Celtic teammate and Thistle manager, Gary Caldwell. The striker made his debut as a Thistle man away at Alloa, replacing Aidan Fitzpatrick in the 64th minute. Within just 15 minutes of his introduction, he had his first Jags goal, poking the ball past Neil Parry after collecting Lewis Mansell’s knockdown. He was a huge success in his four month stint as a Jag, scoring 7 goals in 13 games, and impressing everyone with his fitness, skill, attitude and sheer will-to-win. At one point, he even had the Thistle fans dreaming of a long overdue return to Hampden when he scored the opener in the Scottish Cup Quarter Final replay at Tynecastle, but Hearts ultimately came back for a 2-1 win. Somewhat heroically, Scott scored in the final game of the season, a 3-0 win away to Queen of the South which mathematically ensured that relegation was avoided. It was mission accomplished for the player, and he left with the rare accolade of scoring in both his debut and finale as a Jag.

Clearly bitten by the bug, he just didn’t seem to want to give up playing at that point and, would you believe it, moved back to Australia and added another four clubs to his playing roster from 2019 to 2022. HE moved into management with Gold Coast Knights and still ended up having to play once as an emergency cover/substitute. What a man!

Scott is included in our feature piece, The Definitive Who's Who Of The Partick Thistle Internationalists →