Jamie Bhatti’s extraordinary rise through rugby’s ranks could continue on Saturday with a first Test match start against Australia’s Wallabies, but it will just be another day at work for a man who truly knows what that means.

Not so long ago the 23-year-old was working in a slaughterhouse, desperately seeking an alternative to the manual labour he was performing working in a slaughterhouse.

Rugby consequently provided him with a lifeline after he had flunked his bid to become a very different type of boy in blue.

“There was a time when I thought the pro rugby thing had passed me by. I was looking at other careers. I applied for the police but I messed up the interview for that,” he revealed.

“I passed the fitness test, I passed the written test and then came to the formal interview and I made a mess of it. It was maybe a godsend I didn’t get it. I said if I got in the police I would have stepped away from rugby.

“I just froze. There were two of them in front of me firing the questions and I just panicked. It was all a bit formal and I had the suit and tie on.”

He admitted that the job he was doing, lugging carcases around the slaughterhouse, only provided additional motivation to grab his rugby opportunity when it arrived.

“I didn’t want to be there for the rest of my days. Anything would have done,” said Bhatti.

“Being there makes you want it more, work that bit harder so you don’t have to go back and do the manual labour, getting up at half five in the morning, driving into your work.”

Little wonder his a no-nonsense approach to his work these days, then and while he was aware that he was robbed of an opportunity to play a part in creating an upset on Saturday, he was not prepared to make a fuss about it.

Bhatti was the player the ball fell to after All Black captain Kieran Read illegally slapped the ball out of Jonny Gray’s hands.

Had the referee played an advantage, as he surely should have, the prop had the line at his mercy.

“The ball came squirting out from Jonny Gray’s hands and I picked it up. As I picked it up the whistle went so I didn’t celebrate,” he admitted.

Which is not to say that he did not feel there was some injustice at play as Kieran Read, the All Black captain, got away with deliberately slapping the ball forward to break up the Scottish attack at a crucial stage of the match.

“I am not a ref but I would say it should be play on.

“I never saw the slap at the time but you do as you do. I reacted to it, picked the ball up and the sticks were there so that was it.

“It would have been my first try. I have not scored for Glasgow yet. So imagine that, first score for Scotland.”

Bhatti's Glasgow Warriors front-row colleague Fraser Brown has meanwhile been recalled to the national squad, along with former clubmate Sean Maitland.