When Gordon Ross finally takes his leave of rugby, will we 
celebrate the impish abilities that brought him his 25 caps, or will we wonder how such an extraordinarily gifted individual did not win any more?

The jury will have to be out for a couple of seasons yet, as it is not inconceivable that Ross, now 31, could yet add to his quarter-century of Scotland appearances. Even now, though, it seems remarkable that a player who could have represented his country in as many as four different sports never managed to take ownership of the Scotland number 10 jersey for an extended period of time.

It is, after all, the position for an all-rounder, and Ross has certainly been that. Accomplished at cricket and tennis, he played golf for Scotland as a youth – Justin Rose was one of his opponents – and was a good enough footballer to be a trialist for Hearts. Even in rugby it has always been 
difficult to pigeonhole him as one kind of fly-half or another, for he has often seemed capable of flicking a switch that turned him from a cautious and conservative playmaker into a dazzling will o’ the wisp.

He has also been a player who has been happy to go looking for work – in every sense. Having started as an amateur with Heriot’s, his professional peregrinations saw him doing shifts for Edinburgh, Leeds, Castres and Saracens before he signed on at his current, rather improbable workplace of Old Deer Park, home of London Welsh. The famous old club has been in the doldrums in recent years, but Ross is now at the heart of a multinational effort to make the dragon roar in west London again.

“They’ve only been professional for a couple of years and they’re still adjusting to that,” says Ross of the Richmond-based outfit. “Obviously, they don’t have the kind of expenditure that you’d get in the Magners League or the Guinness Premiership, so it’s a tight budget, but you get used to that kind of thing pretty quickly.”

That kind of thing should have meant a round trip of 600-plus miles to Penzance today to take on the Cornish Pirates, but that has been postponed due to the weather. This might represent a bit of a comedown for a player who has enjoyed the trappings of Test stardom, but the more critical difference for Ross is the fact he is now enjoying regular first-team rugby again, something that drifted off the agenda at each of his last three clubs.

Even at Edinburgh, Ross had to fight for his place with Duncan Hodge, who was also a rival for the international berth. Hence the rugby switchback ride that saw him set a Scotland debut points record in 2001 – when he scored 23 for his country against Tonga – and then drift out of the Test picture for most of the following year.

On his return in November 2002, one of his first contributions was to help Scotland to their 21-6 victory over South Africa at Murrayfield, their first win against the Springboks for 33 years. That achievement should have cemented him into the fly-half berth, but he was on the bench again for the following weekend’s match against Fiji. In total, 14 of his 25 caps have been earned as a replacement.

Small wonder that just starting a match is something he covets. Not that he feels particularly covetous a couple of days later.

“It’s OK until I wake up on a Monday morning and my body is in agony,” he laughs. “I’m not used to that in a consistent way, week after week. But I definitely enjoy it more than the alternative. Fitness-wise, you have to make sure you look after yourself, especially once you’re past 30.”

That consideration is all the more pressing throughout a season in which the top eight teams in The Championship, formerly National Division One, face a preposterously convoluted play-off system to decide which one of them should win promotion to the Guinness Premiership. Clearly, player welfare was not a major consideration in the design of the new system, as the club who go up will have played 30 games on the trot to get there.

“It’s a bit of a crazy situation,” he says. “In the past it was simply the team who finished top that went up, but I think they’ve tried to jazz it up with this new way of doing things. Theoretically, you could finish eighth and then end up being promoted. I can’t see it happening again in the future. But we have to be ready for it.

“It is a league where everyone seems capable of beating everyone else, so you never know what’s going to happen. We beat Exeter, who are second in the table, last weekend, but we struggle to beat teams who are ninth or 10th at times. But if we can continue to win our home games and pick up a few results away then we’ll hopefully get a top-four finish, which would be a big advantage the way the play-offs are set up.”

Ross signed on with London Welsh for two years at the start of this season, but he has a break clause in his contract that would allow him to leave at its end. Which begs the question, of course, of how he would feel about a return to Scotland, where quality and experienced fly-halves are not exactly thick on the ground.

Edinburgh’s Phil Godman is 
struggling for form and Glasgow’s Dan Parks is Cardiff-bound. Their natural
successors are at the toddler stage of their professional careers. Surely there is a role for a player with both the 
natural ability and the miles on the clock that Ross can boast, as much as a mentor as anything else?

Ross, then out of contract, spent time training with Edinburgh last summer, but the arrangement was never meant as an extended trial. “It was more about keeping myself in condition than anything else,” he says. “I spent about six weeks there and really enjoyed it. It was certainly a lot more fun than training by myself, that’s for sure.

“Obviously, I still have a lot of attachment to the Scottish set-up having been so involved there in the past, but I’ve also enjoyed being away and having the challenges that involves. I suppose going back might be a 
possibility if circumstances were right, but I am enjoying what I’m doing now so I’m just not thinking along those lines.”

Nor of an international return. 
Ross says he lives in hope, the main hope being that his club form 
provokes interest among the national coaches, but being overlooked for the Scotland A trip to the Nations Cup in Romania last summer was a clear signal to him that he is no longer in the frame.

Just another slap in the face after all the others he has taken? He won’t lose sleep over it. “I think my mother gets more bothered by that than I do. I 
sometimes feel that if I had a run of games I could have given it a better crack of the whip, but it didn’t happen. I still enjoyed all the time I had with Scotland, and I suppose I maybe didn’t make the most of the opportunities I was offered.”