ANDY Burns is a long time out of Possilpark. To be in the company of this 28-year-old judoka you would hardly guess that he was Scottish, let alone the product of two Glaswegian parents who was reared on the mean streets of the north of Glasgow. A bronze medalist at the Commonwealth Games last summer in the -90kg category, Burns competes in the city of his birth again in the European Open next Saturday. While the scenes he relates of his childhood seem more akin to a gathering of the Barksdale clan in an episode of The Wire, the irony isn't lost upon him that it took leaving Possilpark at the age of 10 for him to become an expert in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

"The area of Glasgow which I grew up in, Possilpark, has the lowest male life expectancy in the whole of the UK," said Burns. "We lived on Saracen Street, the main through road, and my youngest memories were of drug dealers and people shooting up on the street. I wasn’t allowed out past 5pm because there was gang warfare on our doorstep. We were on the high floor of one of the tenement buildings and I was looking out, seeing the police chasing people around. It seemed like entertainment when you’re a kid but I realise now how dangerous it was.

“My parents split when I was 10 and my mum moved us to England," he added. "That’s when I started finding sport, football at first and then judo at 16. But as a kid from Glasgow coming in with the strongest Possilpark accent imaginable, no-one could understand me. So I got into fights at school. Between 10 and 18 my accent filtered out and my weegie side disappeared."

Burns now travels the world with judo - he jets out to Uzbekistan this weekend and competes in the Bundesliga for a team called Asahi Stremberg who are sponsored by the Japanese brewing company - but his adoption of the Japanese martial art had an accidental quality to it. Having moved to Blackburn, Lancashire, as a child, he first got into goalkeeping but a battle of wills with a school pal led to something more lasting. He pursued his judo in Bath before moving north to base himself at Judo Scotland's training base at Ratho, near Edinburgh.

"In Blackburn, like Glasgow, football is king," added Burns. "It’s been said I have a wingspan like an albatross and I was an okay goalkeeper. But one of my friends at school was on the British judo team. He had the same surname as me so we'd be always sat beside each other. He’d try to copy my work, I’d say: ‘get away’ and we’d get into some scraps. He’d throw me across the classroom like a rag doll but the more it happened, the more I wanted to do it.

"So I went along to a judo club," he added. "He gave me a suit and then threw me about for an hour and a half. They looked at it as an acid test. ‘If he comes back, he’s serious.’ I went five nights as week until I went full-time in Bath. I had a quick progression but I paid my dues as the only white belt in the club. I got a thrashing every time. But I thank the guy every time I see him because it set me on a path to travelling and winning medals and going to good universities, all off the back of sport. It changed my life so I’m very fortunate."

After the conclusion of his Bundesliga season in December - ["It's a little bit like the Champions League for judo - you're allowed three foreign players in a team of seven and they try to buy in the best talent," he says] next on Burns' to-do list is a chance to compete for a medal at the Olympic Games in Rio next year. It is a date with destiny he has held since missing out on London 2012 due to injury.

“With the injury for London, I was straight away thinking ‘nothing but Rio’," said Burns, who will need to be ranked in the World's top 30 to ensure qualification for the Olympics. "The Commonwealth Games was a nice interruption but the whole goal has been Rio and that’s been my focus. The first year of qualification, you were liking it to a marathon run. As we now look at Glasgow into the end of this year, it’s coming up to the sprint finish. You want to be in a strong position to qualify. I have five more events to get my ranking up before the end of the year and you know you have to get medals now to put yourself in a comfortable position.

“Knowing I wasn’t going to go to London 2012, my now-wife bought tickets to watch," he recalled. "She said: ‘do you want to go and watch your day?’ At first, I thought no. But I’d never been to an Olympics before so I forced myself to go. Seeing guys I could beat, seeing the medallists, instantly inspired me. She gave me an envelope when we were watching and inside was a little card that said: ‘in four years time, we’ll be in Rio together’. Seeing that, I was definitely inspired to make sure I’m in Rio. Everyone is thinking now about getting a medal. But first you have to get the ticket on the plane."