The mode of transport fits more with the image of Kiwi outdoorsman than modern international sportsman as Nick Grigg, to the potential discomfort of his uncomplaining 6’6” passenger and team-mate Brian Alain’uiese, pitches up in a decidedly unflashy Smart car.

“I am saving the environment one little bit at a time,” he contends with a broad smile on his arrival at a gathering designed to promote Glasgow Warriors’ annual awards dinner, before adding: “There’s actually a lot more room than you think. Once you get in there’s a lot of leg space. The roof isn’t as high as I’d like it to be. I could maybe get one of those convertible roofs next time, but I fitted a ladder in there the other day as well, so there’s ways to get around in these small cars.”

Adding that he does vote Green, he further explains that: “I would just say I’m a very chilled out bloke and I try to do things as casually and easily as I can.”

Until, that is, he crosses the white line on what he would have grown up calling a paddock, whereupon he becomes an irrepressible sprite, punching way above his weight as a 13 and half stone, 5’7” centre… tiny by the standards of the modern game.

Grigg clearly suspects that was among the reasons his initial aspirations in the sport came to nought.

“I’d grown up most of my life in New Zealand and everyone has that dream of playing for the All Blacks, but I didn’t quite get the opportunity to play professionally back home,” he explained.

“I don’t really know why. There were lots of people saying I was good enough to play professionally there, but Wellington’s quite a rich environment for really talented players coming up and I didn’t get into the academy stuff first off. There were a few things I needed to work on in terms of my skillset and I treated it more as playing for pure enjoyment, so the coaches at that time didn’t see me as a professional rugby player.

“I’m not the biggest centre, but I just didn’t fit into their team. Every coach has a team in their head that they want to play and I didn’t fit into it, so then I decided I would try something, take it into my own hands and I made a video and because I am Scottish and sent it over here.”

Not that he was targeting international honours as he did so, as much as looking for a way to subsidise a bit of globe-trotting.

“Rugby’s so worldwide now and with Prem One clubs around the world in Spain and Portugal and Germany, you can go to these countries you want to travel to and they set you up with accommodation and stuff, so you don’t necessarily have to be in that professional environment. You can use rugby as a means to travel to all these places round the world which is pretty amazing,” Grigg observed.

So, he made that video “for a bit of fun and to show off and then it got some interest.”

“I got the email from my agent saying you’d better start practising the national anthem now and my dad and I laughed, but a year and a half later I got my first cap which was pretty awesome, so that’s thanks to my grandad for giving me the Scottish blood and heritage to play,” he continued.

“To be fair I didn’t want to move. I’m quite a homebody, I really love my friends and family back home, but I was working for the Wellington City Council and they gave me a year’s leave, so I could go away and come back and rejoin with the same sort of job. Once they did that my family and friends were saying ‘what have you got to lose.’”

The 25-year-old admits that those who encouraged him to do so now, three years on, have mixed feelings, missing him as they do, but proud of what he has achieved.

That now includes joining the select few to have become a Calcutta Cup winner in a Scotland jersey during the professional era, as a result of his cameo appearance as a replacement during last month’s Murrayfield win, but there were moments last Saturday when he was beginning to feel like something of a jinx.

“I started against Fiji in the summer and we lost that game and I started against Italy, so I was beginning to think ‘take me off the field… it’s me,’ but we won it, so a win’s a win,” he laughed.

It was indeed and Grigg has been involved in a lot more of those than anything else this season, while the way he responded to having been left out of the match 23 for Scotland’s opening brace of matches in this season’s Six Nations Championship was telling.

“The first two games I asked Gregor (Townsend, Scotland’s head coach) what I needed to do to get into the team and he said it was crucial when I was playing for Glasgow to take those opportunities and show him that I was keen to get involved, so I did that,” he explained.

“I got voted player of the month in February, for the Cheetahs game, Munster and the Dragons. That was pretty awesome.”

A very different type of player to the man he replaced in the Scotland team, clubmate Pete Horne, his directness provides a different type of option that should allow the national team’s management to vary their approach according to the nature of the opposition.

“He wanted me to run it up the guts against Italy and that’s what I did I guess and it’s good to have a range of players in the team who offer different skillsets,” Grigg noted.

His appetite for Test rugby having been initially whetted on last year’s tour of the Southern Hemisphere, he is consequently identifying this summer’s trek across the Americas as an opportunity to consolidate his place in the national squad, while further broadening his horizons on this long-extended year out.

“I’d love to get on the summer tour to Canada, USA and Argentina and I just want to be involved the whole time leading up to the World Cup which would be the next dream goal,” he said.

There are, though, other rugby ambitions to be achieved in between times and Grigg believes that he and his colleagues are well on course to fulfilling a prediction that slightly undermines that self-characterisation as a “chilled, casual bloke.”

“Finishing the Six Nations with a win is good leading back into the Glasgow campaign,” he said of the bid to win the inaugural Pro14 title which resumes when Zebre visit Scotstoun tomorrow evening.

“I said from the start of the season that we’re here to win it and all the players, not just the Scotland boys, but everyone who’s involved in the squad, has shown they have that feeling that we can do it and win it.

“We’re playing well, playing good rugby, so we’re going to win it. You’ve got to be confident.”

As Ian McGeechan famously said, some 30 years ago, New Zealanders are Scots who have learned how to win.