How Stuart Hogg became Scotland's first rugby rock star before retirement

Stuart Hogg registered 171 points for Scotland over an 11-year period

Stuart Hogg sprung a surprise in March when announcing his intention to retire from rugby after the World Cup.

Like all those bemused victims of his footwork and pace across the span of his 11 years as a Test player, no-one saw it coming.

The update on Sunday that the end is now rather than nigh was less of a shock. Last month, Scotland went on a pre-World Cup training camp in France and Hogg was not involved.

Scottish Rugby said it was down to personal reasons, but the suspicion began to form at that point that something was up.

• Scotland's Hogg announces immediate retirement

Hogg turned 31 in June, not especially old in today's game, but the miles on his clock are significant.

He's been at the top level since he was a teenager. A century of caps, a Pro12 win with Glasgow Warriors, a European and Premiership double with Exeter Chiefs, two Six Nations player of the year awards and three British and Irish Lions tours.

He would have bust a gut to be in France later in the year. He would have tried everything there was to try to get a last hurrah, but if the mind was telling him to go for it, the body was not listening.

And so, it's over. Hogg is not just one of the greatest players in Scottish rugby history - he's also been a deeply compelling character.

There are two Hoggs in many ways. There was the Hogg who appeared in a room full of journalists with his guard up and his antennae twitching - and the Hogg one encountered in a different setting. One to one, he was a complex individual.

There is deep sadness in his story. You cannot catalogue Hogg's career without revisiting the night it could have all come to a tragic end.

He's been asked many times about the car accident that claimed the life of his friend, Richard Wilkinson, how these these two young men played rock, paper, scissors to see who got to sit in the front passenger seat, how the driver of the car got involved in a race, how the car overturned at 90mph and how Wilkinson died, while Hogg, in the back seat, survived.

"At that age, you think you're invincible, don't you?" he once said.

Listening to Hogg speak, there were hints of the depths to that awful experience and how it impacted on him that only those closest to him will know.

He's got Wilkinson's initials tattooed on his ribs. He did a W sign to the heavens every time he scored a try - and there were 27 of those for Scotland, a record.

Hogg spoke about how he wanted to bring his friend with him on his journey and this was the only way he knew how. Richard Wilkinson has gone, but in Hogg's mind, in a sense, he's never left.

'A huge menace as a try scorer'

Hogg was capped for the first time less than three years after the accident. At the time, Scotland's attacking game was non-existent.

He arrived into a team that had a chronic and cringe-making inability to score tries. A lightning quick full-back with brilliant footwork, a sumptuous offloading game and a huge menace as a try scorer, he was greeted with awe by Scottish fans because they had not seen anyone like him in an age.

In the four Six Nations championships before his debut, Scotland had failed to score a try in 50% of their games.

Hogg was a genuine rugby rock star - Scotland's first of the professional age. It would be another three years before Finn Russell played his first Six Nations match. For every minute of those three years, the creative burden rested pretty much on Hogg and nobody else.

Hogg brought adventure and skill. He offered hope. He was a Lion at 20. In 2016 and 2017, he emulated Brian O'Driscoll by winning back-to-back Six Nations player of the championship awards, as voted for by the public.

There were layers to Hogg the player. A bravado and a vulnerability. The way he talked about his younger self in the wake of that first Lions tour as a kid in 2013 is severe. He said he let the selection go to his head, got too big for his boots, thought he had outgrown his club, Glasgow Warriors, and angled for a move to Ulster.

His Glasgow coach, Gregor Townsend, dropped him for the Pro12 final against Leinster as a result of his petulance. "I was sitting in the stand with a pint. It was rubbish and all my own doing."

'There's been turbulence, but there's been glory'

What made Hogg fascinating was the twin sides of his personality. He was fond of his public image - the hair, the teeth, the wedding pictures in Hello magazine - but when he talked, the barriers came down and somebody altogether more real emerged.

Getting invalided out of the 2017 Lions tour caused him untold angst. "It absolutely killed me," he said.

Hogg fractured his cheekbone, then had his shoulder reconstructed, then tore a muscle in his gut, then did his shoulder again. In two years, he played 19 games for Glasgow. Then there was his dalliance with social media as this was developing.

"The problem with me being the person I am is that I listen to what people have to say. I could get 99 brilliant comments and one person will abuse me and that will be one that I focus on," he said a few years back.

"I know there are a lot of people who'll go in the changing room after a match and search for their name on social media. I was really bad for that. I was listening to all these external voices and trying to prove them wrong. I was trying too hard, too uptight and it got worse and worse and the love of the game was gone."

How many sports people speak about their own frailties in that way? When Leinster knocked Exeter out of the Champions Cup in 2021, Hogg said that he played "like an absolute clown". The self-analysis, at times, was more brutal than any pundit could muster on their angriest day.

There's been turbulence, but there's been glory. As well as his club success, he captained his country on the day they broke an 18-year hoodoo when winning in Wales, was captain again when they won in Paris for the the first time in 22 years and captain once more when they conquered Twickenham for the first time in 38 years.

The loss of the Scotland captaincy last year is just another dimension. Hogg and five others went out drinking in Edinburgh on a Saturday night when they should have been back at camp preparing for the trip to Dublin a week later.

As captain, the criticism alighted on him (and Russell). His truculent post-match press conference did him no favours. In a less confrontational setting, Hogg might have handled it a whole lot differently.

In the 2023 Six Nations, he was quietly effective rather than barnstormingly brilliant. The wear and tear was catching up on him. Blair Kinghorn was excellent off the bench during the championship and will now slot straight into the full-back position for the World Cup. Scotland will move on, but Hogg's nous will be missed.

His career ran the gamut of emotion, a rollercoaster of incredible highs and desperate lows. The part he played in dragging Scotland out of the miserable doldrums of before was absolutely enormous.

What was always obvious from the start was Hogg's love of Scotland and the pride he felt when playing for his country. It was all he ever wanted to do. And very, very few in the story of the sport in his country did it better.