Steve Scott’s new rugby column, The Breakdown, kicks off

Stuart Hogg, Scottish rugby’s unquestioned superstar of the moment, is a Border boy from his go-faster skinhead to his luminous boot tips. The best of the breed – I think by the time he’s done he’ll be regarded unanimously as Scotland’s greatest-ever player – is also among the last of the breed.

The representation of the old heartland has diminished in the Scotland squad in recent times, and demographics and logisitics strongly suggest it’ll never be the same.

With Ross Ford winding down, it’s really just Hoggy and Greig Laidlaw left. There’s more players out of Strathallan School in the Scotland set-up than from the entire Borders these days.

Greeg, of course, is now in France, and at 32, likely there for the rest of his career. He’s a rare one of the Border boys – Gregor Townsend and Kelly Brown were others – who has broadened his horizons away from Scotland.

Border lads, in the main, tend to stick to their native terrain. “A day out of Hawick is a day wasted” Bill McLaren used to say.

The furthest outpost for the rugbyplaying sons of the Tweed was generally Newcastle – Gary Armstrong, Doddie Weir, Alan Tait, Craig Smith and Scott MacLeod all played there and it was more convenient for getting home than even Glasgow.

Is Hoggy, who comes to the end of his current contract with Glasgow in the spring, one of the Border home boys or does he have the wanderlust of his friend Laidlaw, or Scotland’s other great creative talent of the moment, Finn Russell?

When last up for a new deal, Hogg had just got married and had a family on the way. The deal the SRU cooked up to keep him at home was as lucrative as any that has ever come out of Murrayfield, but still short of what was being offered in England and France.

Home comforts, plus the SRU’s care package – the players’ faith in Dr James Robson, Scotland’s long-time head of medical services, can never be underestimated – meant Hoggy agreed to stay.

His reputation remains sky-high. Six Nations Player of the Year twice in the last three years, another Lions tour – sadly shortened by a freak injury – and New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen description of him as “a special player”. If anything Hogg’s stock has risen.

So there will be lucrative offers coming his way – surely in excess of the €900,000 a year that Finn Russell reportedly is getting at Racing in Paris – and there is huge pressure on Murrayfield to work out another package to keep him in Scotland.

What has changed? Hogg has two of a family now, but there are also those recent injuries.

After the Lions tour accident, he got another which meant he missed time ahead of the Six Nations, and this season, frustratingly as he seemed to be flying and at his best, an ankle injury has derailed him until the New Year.

A rugby player’s career can be a fragile one. Hogg has avoided serious injuries for much of his time, but the last couple of seasons with considerable inaction might have concentrated his mind.

Maybe it is time to cash in on a lucrative deal in the Top 14 or the Premiership, to maximise his earning opportunities?

The SRU has some interesting options as well. Hogg is unapproached in appeal at the box office, and for promotion.

But such a large wad of budget –

Maybe it is time to cash inona lucrative deal in the Top 14 or Premiership to maximise his earning opportunities?

from Glasgow and from central funding – on one player?

Does it make sense when Murrayfield is desperate to maintain and improve the competitive levels of the two pro teams?

The last high-profile, beloved Scottish player to be in this situation was probably Chris Paterson. Mossy left for Gloucester but was back within a year, and played out all but that one season of his career in Edinburgh.

Mossy was not really a Border home boy in the same way that Hogg is. But still, one recalls the “off-the-rails” spell the full-back had at Glasgow in 2014 when his head was turned by an offer from Ulster.

There was no compunction about moving away then, although that was before family ties and maturity set in.

If Hogg’s for moving on and taking the money, he certainly can’t be blamed and there is nothing much Murrayfield can do to stop it happening.

Or maybe the ties of home will be too strong. It will be fascinating to find out what happens. New Zealand play the full 80

One shouldn’t be entirely surprised with another All Black comeback, as we saw at Pretoria on Saturday.

Although Rassie Erasmus withdrawing Willie Le Roux, Faf de Klerk and Malcolm Marx too early was a questionable tactic, we should know New Zealand play until the last whistle.

It’s because they do it every time. How many times do you see them run up the score in the dying minutes of a game already won?

It seems like relentless cruelty to a beaten team at times.

But there’s method there. Keep playing at full tilt whatever the scoreline, you never know when you’ll actually need it.

When the All Blacks are tested, they have that in reserve.

And it works.

Stuart Hogg is out of contract at Glasgow at the end of this season, and is in demand.