For Gray the future is bright blond

Glasgow may be losing Scotland's poster boy but his own prospects will be enhanced

'I do have ambitions to be picked for the Lions tour,' says Richie Gray. 'I know I've got to make improvements' (Getty Images)

Richie Gray could be forgiven if he had his head stuck in the clouds. The Scotland lock reached the height of six feet before his teens, and he was preparing to study aeronautical engineering at Glasgow University before rugby intervened.

The bottle-blond poster boy of the Scottish game cites the most straightforward of reasons for choosing to leave his home-town team next summer to join Sale. "I see Premiership rugby as being very physical in the forwards and that is a big factor in my decision," he says. "In the scrum, the line-out, the maul – generally speaking, the physicality of the game is my biggest challenge. I do have ambitions to be picked for the Lions tour in 2013 and I know I've got to make improvements."

Given the reports that Glasgow – who Gray joined in 2008 rather than taking up the university place – were offering £300,000 a year, it is possible to believe him when he says money was not the motivator for the move south.

He also had to brave the persuasive powers of the Scotland coach, Andy Robinson – twice. "We had one fairly long conversation a month ago – two weeks after Scotland got back from the World Cup – and another two weeks later," Gray says. "It was in the nature of 'I'm thinking about my future, and looking for a bit of insight', which Andy gave. He wanted me to stay up in Glasgow but he's given full backing to my decision, after I'd made it."

It is a blow to a Scottish domestic scene already struggling for crowds and credibility. Now 22 and with 16 caps, Gray throws his 6ft 10in, 20-stone frame around the field with eye-catching dynamism. He has a poacher's gift at the line-out and was the only Scot in many pundits' (including this one) select XV of the World Cup. Fans wore masks of his face everywhere from Murrayfield to Mt Everest to Afghanistan last summer after Glasgow's marketing wheeze, "Make Scotland a Gray Area". Instead it will be a less colourful place as Gray follows the former Glasgow back-rower Richie Vernon and the Edinburgh lock Fraser McKenzie to Sale.

Asked for his abiding memories of the World Cup in which Scotland defeated Romania and Georgia but lost the crucial pool matches to England and Argentina, thus failing for the first time to reach the quarter-finals, Gray says: "It's pretty cold down in Invercargill but they have a very good coffee shop. The other one would be the atmosphere at the Scotland-England game at Eden Park, which was electric."

How long did it take to get over the Scots being 12-3 ahead – which would have been enough to qualify and knock England out – then losing 16-12? "There was huge disappointment. If it hadn't been for two minutes in the Argentina game and two minutes in the England game, it could have been the quarter-finals and then who knows? Instead it was back to Glasgow."

It must have been a jolt, that journey. From the cacophony of 60,000 spectators in Auckland to homely Firhill, with a 5,000 crowd shoehorned into one stand for the Heineken Cup opener with Bath last Sunday. But Gray, who spends his free time playing the Call of Duty shoot-em-up game, is not about to run his team down.

"I think the Glasgow set-up is good and I believe it will only go from strength to strength," he says. "Moving to Scotstoun stadium [next year] will be great and they have a new chief executive who really wants to drive the whole thing forward. If you take last week against Bath the atmosphere was brilliant. I believe that if they manage to fill Scotstoun, it will get better and better."

Bath were beaten 26-21 and the galloping Gray scored the decisive try with superb awareness of a deflected kick to set up Glasgow's second European pool match today against Leinster in Dublin. The teams met there in the Pro12 in September when both were depleted by the World Cup and Glasgow won 23-19. "We'll take confidence from that, though we know this will be a tougher challenge," Gray says. "Brian O'Driscoll is a huge player for them and he's missing injured, but they've got quality across the board. They are the European champions, after all."

O'Driscoll's lengthy Lions career is something Gray can only dream of – for now. Scotland's Six Nations re-match with England is only 11 weeks off, and Gray will give his all in his remaining time with Glasgow. It is not so long since he was obliged to switch from playing football to rugby by going to his secondary school, Kelvinside Academy. "I was six foot at 12 or 13 but I was always a pretty skinny guy, a bit of a beanpole," he chuckles. "So I wasn't really that intimidating, just quite tall. I was in the second row from the start – I tried to get out, but just got forced back in."

And the hair: the unkempt thatch that looks like he has been dragged through a heather bush backwards? "I first started dyeing it when I was 15 years old, and it's stuck ever since and just got longer and longer. I do feel comfortable with it. It doesn't take too much styling, you just kind of wake up with it. It's pretty easy."

And for all his gentlemanly comments about Glasgow and his own blond-bright future, Gray does not deny the hair helps him stand out. "That's an added benefit," he says.

Leinster v Glasgow Warriors is on Sky Sports 3 today, kick-off 12.45