There is nothing like a spell in oblivion to make a player relish a return to the good times. So for Scott Gray, the present spell of form, fortune and family bliss has a special tinge of extra pleasure in it.

It is not much more than a year since the former Borders back row, capped against Australia in 2004, was written off. He was put on the scrap-heap by the vagaries of Scottish rugby politics and had to contemplate the possibility that his professional career might be about to end.

He had been one of those forced out of Scotland when the Borders team was axed, and without any senior clubs in England or France showing interest, even though he was a full international, he had to decide whether to give it all up or to drop down a level and try to battle back from there.

“I joined Doncaster, hoping that either they would get into the Premiership or that I would play well enough to get picked up by a team that was already there,” he said. “There was always the thought that if I could not get out of that level soon, it would be the end of the road, I had to put those out of my head and concentrate on the rugby.”

The breakthrough came when Doncaster played Northampton in the league last season. “I had a really good game, scoring two tries, and I guess that caught the eye of the Saints’ coaches. They started monitoring me and offered a deal,” he said.

“I got off to a really good start there, helped by having a full preseason, I could train really hard for a whole three months and by the start of the season I was feeling really good.”

So he should. Man of the match in Northampton’s first game back in the Premiership and eye-catching performances in several other games propelled him back into the Scotland squad, first the big 50-man unit - though he was one of those prevented from attending - then the elite 30-man group taken to Spain to prepare for this month’s internationals.

“Frank Hadden [the Scotland head coach] was at one of our preseason matches, presumably to watch Euan Murray and Sean Lamont, but I played pretty well and went up to him afterwards to remind him, ‘don’t forget about me, I’m still keen to get involved with Scotland’,” Gray said.

Better still, as the rugby side of his life started to flourish, so did the personal side, culminating in the arrival of his first child, a daughter, Paya. “Starting a family means that rugby is no longer the be-all, the family is the most important thing,” he said. “It is weird, I am going through a green patch at the moment, everything seems to be going my way. Long may it last.”