If you believe what Jonny Gray says, it’s all down to luck.
He’s lucky to be where he is. He’s had the greatest role model possible in growing up in elder brother Richie.
He’s “privileged” to be in the Scotland team. He’s been helped so much by his coaches and mentors at Glasgow. He’s fortunate to have been one of the great teachers of the darks arts of lineout in former Scotland captain Al Kellock.
It seems that only serendipity is the difference between the 20-year-old and any other lad off the street. It’s all just fallen into place for the shy young man.
But there’s a reason why he looks to the manor born in every element of being a Scotland player with the exception of the really quite peripheral matter of being comfortable during interviews with the media.
It’s because it’s not down to luck. He’s really, really good.
You won’t shake Jonny from his modesty. Not that he’s self-deprecating, he’s just always respectful of opposition, almost too concerned with being humble.
Take when he was asked this week about the Welsh lineout, which has been struggling in recent games giving up a succession of steals certainly an area which the Scots, using a slick and productive new lineout scheme with Jonny at its heart, will try to exploit further.
“Alan Wyn Jones and Jake Ball (the Welsh locks) are class players,” he said. “Wales have got a really strong lineout.”
But they’ve lost 13 on their own throw in the last three tests, we naturally pointed out.
“I don’t look at those stats, I see two world-class players,” he said. “They’ll come good again, and we’ll have to work hard in that area.”
He’s certain to do that, because his own stats show his work rate is startling. Even when he first game into the Glasgow team at 19, the figures were described as “off the scale” compared with the norm, and he’s maintained that level of industry and effectiveness in international rugby.
Jonny has made 60 tackles in the four tests he’s started since the Argentina game in the autumn, including 19 to lead all-comers in Paris on Saturday. According to the official stats Scotland’s own will be more detailed he’s missed just one tackle in international rugby so far.
But it’s not just in defence. He averages nine carries a game, the most for any forward bar the No 8, and all of them are in the very midst of the action rather than receiving kicks or moving off the back of a scrum. He’s also the lineout captain, calling the moves, and has 15 takes and four steals so far.
Of course he also scored a try in his first start against Argentina. The only blots on the his copybook so far are not giving what would have been a scoring pass to Mark Bennett in that game, and not quite getting to grips yet with the mauling game in international rugby.
But he doesn’t give a thought to his individual effort. “We have a great team spirit and everyone works for each other and for the good of the team,” he says.
The genuine belief about rugby is that Jonny is already a better player than his brother Richie, but he’s having absolutely none of that talk.
“Rich is a world class player, one of the best locks in world rugby,” he said of his brother, five years his senior. “I’ve been so lucky to see Rich growing up, seeing what he had to do to be a pro player, how he worked and applied himself.
“He’s always been my role model and he still is. It’s still kind of surreal to think we’re playing together for Scotland but I couldn’t have had a better guy showing me what to do.”
Having his brother in the second row alongside him has helped bring him on, according to Jonny. But it seems that it’s given a fillip to the elder Gray as well.
Sadly for Scotland, there’s no more to come; Jonny’s twin is a sister, Megan. But the Gray boys could be lynchpins of the Scotland team for years.