IT was a question Chris Burke couldn't resist asking. Even though one look at the man standing across from him in the Nottingham Forest dressing room pretty much gave him his answer. It is building up to international week at the City Ground and the former Rangers winger and Scotland international has just learned that his namesake, and fellow winger, Oliver had just been called up for Scotland's Under-19 ranks. Surely, the 5ft 9in Strawberry blonde Glaswegian wondered, this hulking dark-haired 6ft 2in specimen wasn't some distant, long-lost relative?

"I think the only resemblance is the name," jokes Chris, now embarking on a new chapter in his career up at Ross County. "Obviously he has lived in England pretty much all his life. He played for Nottingham since Under-10 level so credit to them for developing a player like that. He was playing for Scotland before I went there so when I first saw him play, I didn't even know he was Scottish. At the international break, I found out that he and another boy were playing for Scotland with the Under-19s or something. So I started talking to him, seeing if we were related in some sort of way!"

It wasn't so long ago that Chris Burke was a big part of Gordon Strachan's thinking himself - he was a mainstay in the early days of the Strachan regime - but the Scotland manager has been consistent in attempting to develop a different style of footballer for those vital roles off the front and Oliver, now of Red Bull Leipzig, has the kind of attributes which cannot be ignored.

The two Burkes spent two seasons together at Forest, even if Oliver was mainly a youth team player moonlighting with the first team at first, and the Ross County winger, a Kirin Cup winner with Scotland, had moved on by the time his 19-year-old namesake, born in Kirkcaldy, but raised in Melton Mowbray, made the giant strides under Philippe Montanier which really made him the most expensive Scottish player of all time.

But it didn't take long for the older man to suss out that this young upstart would become a serious rival for his place in the team. At the age of 13, Burke could run 100 metres in 11 seconds. These are Gareth Bale-like numbers, the kind of pace which will put the fear of God into any defender. But it wasn't just his optimal pace and physique which set him apart from the other academy products who mixed with the first team from time to time, it was the fact that he still had enough wherewithal after one of those barnstorming runs of his to provide some end product.

"Oliver is the fastest player I have ever seen in my life," says Chris. "I don't think anyone wanted to do a 100m sprint with him in the team! You get players who are very, very quick but they can't control the ball because they are that quick, but he can. He is very powerful as well, when he walks in the door, he is a specimen. Like you put him in a football player machine, and this is what walks out.

"In my first season at Forest, I remember once where we were playing a practice match on a Friday, the team that was playing that Saturday against the team that wasn't playing," recalls the Ross County player. "Oliver was in the team that wasn't playing and he just shot off down the line, and kept going, kept going. He just kept passing people - so quick, so powerful. Usually you get young kids like that who do all the good stuff and then they kick it out of play or slash at it and it goes miles high. But he showed a bit of composure, put it in the net, and the match ended 1-0 to the team that wasn't playing. That wasn't exactly a good start to the weekend for us!

"What I said to him when I was at Nottingham Forest was 'make sure you score goals and get assists'. When you are playing in the wide areas, that is your job at the end of the day. A lot of young players will do well in teams but when you look at their return, it is not good and needs to be worked on. But if you can do that, instantly teams will look at you. That showed when he scored four goals in four games or something and a few assists at the start of the season."

Burke's choice of team, of course, was Red Bull Leipzig at the top end of the Bundesliga, rather than any Barclays Premier League side. While he has already showed his worth, debuting in a 1-1 draw against Borussia Dortmund, then scoring his opening goal against Cologne, Chris reckons that moving to Germany is the perfect next stage of his development.

"I've been fortunate enough to see young Nathan Redmond when I was at Birmingham, and he is a fantastic talent as well," said Chris. "Every level he has been at he has learned and taken it a step further and hopefully Oliver will do the same.

"I think the move is a great thing to be honest - I don't think enough players do it," he added. "It is very brave of him and shows maturity to want to take that challenge on. It would have been easier for him to go to a Premiership team but he thinks his development will come quicker in Germany."

As for his own international ambitions, Chris is putting them on the back burner. "If I am honest it [a Scotland call-up] is not something I am looking at," says Chris. "The way Scotland are doing now, the quality they have got, the young talent in there, it is going to be very hard to get back into that team. There are a lot of people before me anyway, let's put it that way. I just want to concentrate on playing week in, week out, for Ross County and making a contribution to this team.

"But the way Scotland played in the last game shows that they can kick on and hopefully we get another victory this weekend," he added. "No qualification is ever going to be easy - it is a long time since we did it - and obviously Gordon and the team were a bit disappointed that they didn't manage it the last time. But what better way to qualify from a group than one with England in it?"