THERE is what he misses.

"I used to love those times in the changing room when you are physically and mentally exhausted and your team has won and you can take that two minutes to sit there and look at your team-mates and just bask in it. I miss that as a coach."

It is a significant statement from Gregor Townsend, head coach of Glasgow Warriors. He was portrayed as a maverick player with all the dilettante connotations that can carry. He has, in contrast, been described as an obsessive, technically astute coach, with the unspoken critique that modern technology trumps all.

The truth, though, is that Townsend simply is a rugby fanatic. He is also a character who has become immersed in coaching.

The player who was a catalyst for enterprise for Scotland and the British & Irish Lions has now led the surge of Glasgow Warriors both in domestic league and European competition.

The statistics are impressive: 82 caps for his country and a member of the winning Lions tour to South Africa in 1997. The cv has been gilded with stints playing for clubs in Scotland, England, France, Australia and South Africa.

But the life, concerns and interests of Townsend are best told in stories. He has moved from a distinguished playing career into a coaching world that takes up to 100 hours of his life every week.

So what made him enter such an all-consuming profession?

"The last few years of my playing career were a sort of university of knowledge," says Townsend of a career that encompassed Gala, Borders Reivers, Warringah in New South Wales, Montpellier, Natal Sharks, Castres, Brive and Northampton. "I knew I wanted to use that experience and I thought coaching would be the best outlet. I wasn't sure I would get any satisfaction out of it or even if I would be suited to it. The driver was to stay in sport."

He had three years out of rugby, working with the Winning Scotland Foundation, a charity that helps youngsters learn life skills, and the Scottish Institute of Sport. He then worked with Andy Robinson at Edinburgh and became attack coach of the national side.

"The more hands-on I became, the more I wanted to do," he says. The move to Glasgow was controversial, not least in him replacing the successful Sean Lineen. Townsend has answered criticism with results.

He is enlightening when he tells stories.

There is the perception that the intuitive player cannot become the dedicated coach. Townsend is suspicious of such words as maverick or the notion that brilliance comes without thought or practice. He is renowned for the Toonie Flip that freed Gavin Hastings for a try against France in 1995 but he has strong views on what constitutes improvisation.

"I would have a different view of what is off the cuff," he says in reply to what was instinctive and what was structured when he was a player.

"There is a lot of thought that goes into an offload. A lot of thought is compressed into a fraction of a second. Things do not happen by luck, they happen by learning, by experience, by improving technique in these situations.

"There is a routine to what we do in our coaching, there is a structure to the week, but the way we train is to give players opportunities to try things, make decisions through game-based training."

And this leads to another story.

"When I went to play in France, I came from a system in Scotland that was solidly based on technical matters such as rucking or running in lines etc. But then you go to France and basically the coach throws the ball up into the air and goes 'right lads, get on with it'," says Townsend.

"My initial thought was that this is poor coaching. I said to myself 'anyone can do this'. But it took me a few months to realise the art of coaching is to make the right point. This seemingly unstructured play was very relevant to what we did at the weekend. That probably shaped my thoughts."

These thoughts are now almost constant. Townsend has immersed himself in the modern aspects of coaching on video analysis, diet, recovery and psychology.

But he is endlessly inquisitive on coaching. He was spotted at Hampden when Marcello Lippi, the World Cup-winning Italian coach, gave an audience to aspiring Scottish football managers. He is now reading Pep Confidential, the extraordinary account of a year in the life of the Bayern Munich manager, Pep Guardiola.

"I have bought the e-book too. I was making too many notes in the paperback version," he says.

He regularly meets coaches from other sports and, of course, has exchanged ideas with Alan Archibald of Partick Thistle, who like the Warriors are sponsored by McCrea Financial Services.

Townsend, at 41, is at the beginning of a coaching career so he has regular chats with such as the Waikato Chiefs backs coach Wayne Smith, the legendary Jim Telfer and Frank Dick, the peerless athletics coach and motivational guru.

"I get problems I have never handled before so I ask people for advice," he says simply. Townsend's prominence as a player allowed him to have a couple of glasses of wine with Graham Henry, the 2011 World Cup-winning All Blacks coach.

He has almost instinctively taken on the work ethic of the great coach but has also adopted the mindset that leads to both success and personal satisfaction.

"One of the aspects I love about coaching is the problem solving. It is about decision-making on an hourly basis: how do we decide to play, what team do I pick, how do I talk to a certain player to get a point across? You never master it but you get better at it, I believe.

"I am a better coach than I was two or three years ago. I have learned that you cannot treat everyone the same because people have different needs and different personalities. Everyone has different motivations and they react to stress differently but you must always treat everyone fairly."

And there is a story about the joys of problem-solving.

"I tried to work it out the other day just how many hours I work a week but it will be about 80 to 100. But there can be moments of deep satisfaction that make it all make sense. You can be reviewing a game and see something that will make a difference to one of the players in the team. It might be the smallest of things but it can have a significant impact. Then there is the watching of opponents on DVD. You suddenly say 'that's it: if we can do that we will win the game'."

He accepts that this satisfaction might not match that moment in the dressing-room as a player after a victory but adds of a Glasgow side that is performing strongly both in the Guinness PRO12 and the European Champions Cup: "I love this group of players. We are blown away at what they can do, how they surprise us, how the young players take their opportunities."

And is there a story to illustrate this? Of course.

Glasgow reached the PRO12 final against Leinster in May. "Just before the final Shade Munro [his assistant] and I were watching the team train and it was of a real high quality and I said to him: 'How good is this?'"

Townsend is determined, though, to make it better. And that will be another story.