Josh McPake has been named in Scotland’s squad for the upcoming Nations League games, earning his first involvement in a senior national camp. For a 25-year-old winger who was without a club three years ago, and who was still being offered around to other teams 20 months ago, the call-up is the latest twist in a career that has rarely followed a straight line.
The Hearts winger has made the step back into the Premiership look seamless. He has registered eight goal involvements in 11 games, the highlight a goal and an assist in the Edinburgh derby, and has made himself difficult to leave out. It has not been a straightforward introduction in Gorgie either: Derek McInnes was the head coach when McPake agreed to join, but had departed for Rangers by the time the player got going, and McPake sat out the Champions League qualifiers against Sturm Graz as well as the first league game of the season.
His story began in the Rangers academy, where years of progress through the reserves to the fringes of the first team were rewarded with the club’s player of the year award in 2019. Months later he was handed his first and only senior appearance, coming off the bench in Steven Gerrard’s side during a Europa League qualifying rout of Gibraltar’s St Joseph’s. It proved no sign of things to come. Within a month he was sent out on the first of six loan moves — Dundee, Greenock Morton, Harrogate Town, Morecambe, Tranmere Rovers and Queen’s Park — and nothing permanent ever came of any of them. While out on loan he did score the winner for Scotland Under-19s against Germany in October 2019.
McPake left Rangers on 1 September 2023 and spent nearly six months without a club. He trained with a number of teams and endured what he has described as knocks and setbacks before Stirling Albion finally signed him on a short-term deal. Then-Binos boss Darren Young, the former Aberdeen midfielder, recalled a player who arrived with no trace of ego. “He came into training and he was brilliant — he couldn’t have done any more,” Young said. “He worked very, very hard. He helped put balls away after training, he was always doing extra bits of shooting and finishing.”
Young had tracked McPake while he was a free agent and saw a move to a higher-level club collapse when another player picked up an injury, leaving the winger in limbo. At Forthbank, the work was about more than the attacking side of his game. “I didn’t need to tell him how to go by a player and put it in the top corner — he had all that,” Young said. “I was just trying to say if he could fit into the structure here, work as hard at going back as he did forward, then he’d get, hopefully, an opportunity to kick on again.” McPake scored on his debut for the League 1 side, but Stirling were relegated.
The reward for dropping down and knuckling down was a return to the top flight with St Johnstone on a two-year deal. It did not go to plan at first. He could not force his way into Craig Levein’s team and had similar struggles when Simo Valakari took over in October 2024. Valakari later revealed that McPake was made available in the winter transfer window while Saints fought for their Premiership lives, but that no clubs could be found for him. “The truth is, nobody wanted him,” Valakari said. “For me, that was the wake-up call for Josh. That was when he decided things had to change.”
What followed was a different player. McPake started his first Premiership game for St Johnstone in the first of their five post-split fixtures, kept his place until the end of the season and registered three assists, although Saints were ultimately relegated. In the Championship he set the tone with a hat-trick on the opening weekend against title rivals Partick Thistle, finishing the campaign with 16 goals in the division as St Johnstone won the title. Hearts, then Premiership leaders, agreed a pre-contract with him in January, but he remained focused on repaying the club that had resurrected his career rather than turning his head.
McPake credits the difficult years for the player he has become. “It’s been a mad few years but I’ve loved every part of the journey,” he said after answering his country’s call. “Personally, I feel I needed those experiences to become the player I am now. There were a lot of setbacks but going down the levels, proving myself and working my way back up taught me a lot. If you want something enough and work hard for it, you can achieve it. I don’t want to stop here. I feel I’ve still got more to give.”
At Tynecastle the supporters have already found a song for him, adapting Abba’s Dancing Queen to declare that he is “having the time of his life”. McPake insists he would not change a thing about the route that took him there — and he now has the chance to show a wider audience what the noise is about.