This is a man who has managed his life in a way which keeps him entirely within his comfort zone.

Whatever else has changed about Boyd as he has grown from childhood into a 26-year-old man, it seems his idea of the perfect job has remained entirely unaltered. There is something old-fashioned, quaint even, about the idea of a kid wanting to play for Rangers and then having no ambition to do any more than that once the goal has been realised. In a cynical, venal game, where loyalty is obliterated by the opening of a chequebook, Boyd has been something of a throwback. So far.

You might think him insular or devoid of ambition, and society wouldn’t get very far if everyone was as disinclined as Boyd to show some adventure and make the most of their talents. As a character he doesn’t open up easily and he often comes across as sullen, but there is something admirable about his defiantly stubborn attitude on this. Here is a bloke who hangs around the communities he knows and likes, with all his mates and family close to hand, and who gets paid £11,000 per week to do the very job he would consider the best imaginable. That’s not a bad life. Quite simply, he doesn’t want any of it to change.

There are only 10 miles between Tarbolton, the Ayrshire village where he was brought up, and Rugby Park, where he spent the formative years of his career as a Killmarnock player. When he got the lucrative move that had become inevitable as a consequence of his prolific goalscoring, he travelled only a further 20 miles up the road to join Rangers. We can deliver pious sermons about Boyd not making the most of himself, but where a grown man chooses to live, how much he earns and who employs him is frankly none of our business.

If he was like every other footballer who follows the money he currently would be earning 150% more than he actually does. That is the rise he would have enjoyed as a Premier League player with Birmingham, but in January he rejected the chance to go there despite Rangers all but begging to chauffeur him to Karren Brady’s office. In August, the Turkish clubs Trabzonspor and Kayserispor wanted to hose money at him as well. If reports that they would offer him £50,000-a-week stretched credibility to breaking point, they would still surely have been willing to pay far more than the weekly £11,000 he pockets at the moment.

Boyd didn’t want to know. And if ever there was a player who just might knock back £50,000-a-week because he didn’t fancy Turkey, he’s the man. Every so often a footballer has assets which make him so attractive he is vulnerable to being yanked up by the roots and hauled to an alien environment simply because the money makes it impossible to resist. Paul Gascoigne moving to Rome and Garry O’Connor going to Moscow spring to mind as examples of this comic crashing together of cultures. Neither of them particularly wanted to go, but the rewards on offer meant a transfer was the only sensible option. So they swallowed hard, privately cursed the Italians and Russians for their damned wealth, and opened their bank accounts to let the money gush in.

There are players who cannot cut the umbilical cord – Paul McStay turned down the chance to broaden his game in Italy and saw out his career at Celtic – and others such as Paul Lambert and Darren Fletcher, who left home at school age to join Manchester United, who become all the more rounded and impressive as footballers and as men by throwing off the comfort blanket and challenging themselves.

A move to England could be the making of Boyd, but he doesn’t give the impression that he sees it that way. What’s facing him now is the reality of leaving Rangers in January or next summer or else agreeing to a significant pay cut to stay on a new contract. He or his agent can try every trick in the book to pressure Rangers into a better deal; the club won’t budge on what’s on the table. Eventually even Boyd will surely accept the inevitable and leave, looking over his shoulder as he goes.

It would certainly settle a lot of arguments if he had a fresh start in a different league. Could he score in the English Premier League? Is he really a Championship player? If he leaves he’ll hanker for Ibrox from a distance. Ladbrokes announced odds on a novelty Rangers bet the other day: just 6/1 that Boyd and Allan McGregor will be with Birmingham next season.

Playing under a former Rangers manager and alongside his mate, Barry Ferguson? Even the bookies see Boyd as a man desperate not to cut the strings.

SFA office-bearers Gordon Smith, George Peat and Campbell Ogilvie, not to mention spin doctor Rob Shorthouse, pulled off a minor masterstroke out here in Japan. The four of them looked the picture of untroubled calm in their Yokohoma hotel on Thursday evening, and no wonder. Their mobile phones and Blackberries? Not a single one of them worked in the Japanese network.

No phone calls, no texts, no voicemails. Utter silence. For the men at the top of the SFA – in a week when the brown stuff was heading their way over call-offs and air scares, not to mention a killer typhoon – that is as good as it gets.