SIDELINE CUT:Such is the affection for our Celtic cousins, it does not sit well with us, this business of being favourites to roast Scotland and claim a fifth Triple Crown of the decade, writes KEITH DUGGAN

O FLOWER of Scotland, when will we see your like again?

Do not feel bad about this day, Scottish lads and lassies. No one in this country understands how this has come to pass. It does not seem so long ago since the abiding image of Scottish rugby for all Irish people was of Finlay Calder hammering poor Jim Staples with that granite shoulder of his.

It doesn’t seem so long since Scottish rugby seemed framed in the lean figure of John Jeffrey – hear Bill McLaren echoing “the big Kelso farmer” – emerging from the base of a ruck, navy sleeves rolled and those unfeasibly pale limbs of his going like pistons. No Irish person knew where Kelso was but everyone had heard of it. Scottish rugby was the Hastings brothers piling points on the board in Lansdowne and looking so dapper as they went about their business that they really ought to have played the game in full tuxedo.

It was Craig Chalmers being a devious little heartbreaker. It was Gregor Townsend unconsciously kicking points for the honour of Scotland and the misery of Ireland.

Scottish rugby was David Sole leading his team onto the pitch at Murrayfield in a slow march, a Braveheart moment five years before Braveheart was even filmed.

So it does not sit well with us, this business of being favourites to roast Scotland and duly claim a fifth Triple Crown of the decade. And it doesn’t alter the fact when it comes down to it, Ireland is sort of in awe of the Scotland and Scottish stuff. After all, in terms of giving and taking, it has been one-way traffic.

To begin with, what would Ireland be without Celtic Football Club?

It is hard to pinpoint the number of young Irish men who have identified fiercely and lastingly with Celtic, but that army must now rank in the low millions. I have encountered lads from deepest Tipperary affecting Glaswegian accents once they start talking about their favourite Celtic players. It will be no surprise if Robbie Keane ends up sounding like Rab C Nesbitt after a couple of seasons in Parkhead.

Celtic FC came to our neck of the woods once. This was back in the ’80s. There must have been a break in the season because the team were on a golf holiday in Bundoran.

This is back when the scale of football glamour was more understandable; it will be a cold day in hell before you meet, for instance, the present day Chelsea FC team on a golf – or even a country music festival – break in Bundoran.

And yet their predecessors – the Blues team of Andy Townsend’s era – did just that.

Chelsea knocked around the seaside town for a pre-season warm-up circa 1991. Dennis Wise appeared in a local night club sporting a white polo neck that was luminous. Paul Elliot ducked across the road to grab a bag of chips and was cornered near the poker machine by a friend of mine who is a general soccer nut but an absolute Celtic devotee.

Over Coke and Hawaiian Burgers, they discussed the beautiful game.

But Celtic were the first tourists to jump from the pages of Shoot magazine to our local taverns. This was the Celtic team of Davy Provan, Danny McGrain, Roy Aitken: all big names. Most afternoons, lads scoured the fairways up at the Northern looking for autographs. The players were a reasonable catch but the man everyone wanted was Billy McNeill.

Eventually, after signing his 20th autograph and tiring of standing on the sixth tee in the bracing northwest wind, Danny McGrain pointed at a distinguished-looking guy lining up a putt several greens away.

“There’s Billy over there,” he said. “Why don’t ye get him?”

The autograph posse chased across the golf course to the revered manager only to find themselves plaguing a startled doctor from Fermanagh to sign his name. By the time he had convinced us that he was not the fabled manager, the football stars had disappeared.

That was our first brush with the appeal of Celtic. But for many Irish boys turned to men, Celtic is an itch that never goes away. It is a part of Scotland that Irish people covet and share. And Scotland have always given us that, no questions asked.

But it isn’t just the Bhoys.

Music. What is it with Scotland and bands? Among the vast Scottish roll call are Angus Young, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Ultravox, Annie Lennox, Glasvegas. Scotland gave us Roddy Frame, the Bay City Rollers and The Proclaimers. Scotland gave us Mike Scott, Bon Scott and Primal Scream. Lulu is a Scot. What happened to Simple Minds? Weren’t they about to take over the world? Scotland gave us Franz Ferdinand, Altered Images and The Blue Nile, among many others.

In return, we gave them U2.

The Scots gave us their complex and world-renowned whiskeys, they gave us Sean Connery and Robbie Burns and Edinburgh and those endless bloody golf courses, they gave us Clare Grogan, the Wicker Man and Billy Connolly and Kenny Dalglish.

Scotland gave us also, lest it be forgotten, Gary MacKay, the Heart of Midlothian legend who, while playing for Scotland against Bulgaria, scored the goal that edged the Republic of Ireland into the European Championships in 1988; the shot that was heard around the world.

It came as no surprise that it took a Scotsman to nudge us into the big time. The Scots always seemed to have the knack for punching above their weight, to make their craggy little outpost on the Northern Hemisphere known around the world and for making their accent, at once the most musical and indecipherable brogue on planet Earth (has anyone ever been able to truly interpret what Kenny Dalglish or Alex Ferguson in full flow are actually on about?) also the most generally adored.

When a Scotsman walks into a pub in a foreign country and orders a drink, he expects the female clientele to swoon on the spot. Often, they do.

The Scots have always presented themselves as brand leaders in terms of doughty Celts who take nae shit from the English (even if they still sort of do).

They have the chutzpah to make hurling telephone poles and wearing kilts seem not only macho but vaguely cool. They are, or at least were up to very recently, absolute aces in the whole banking and financial game. Scots folk curse better than any other nation on earth. The Scots glory in their sense of self: the rest of the world makes do with New Year’s Eve – and the Scots even provide us with the official New Year’s Eve song. But only the Scots have Hog-mon-ayyyy.

So when the matter of Scotland versus Ireland was distilled to 15 men from either country whaling into one another in pursuit of a rugby ball, the Scottish had an unfair advantage. For years, they overwhelmed us with their sheer Scottishness.

Have you ever walked into a Dublin bar on a Six Nations weekend to be greeted with two dozen Scotsman on verse three of In A Big Country (Dreams stay with you/like a lover’s voice)?

Lock up your daughters, give up your homestead and relinquish all hope. The Scottish in full voice are impossible to argue with.

Nobody is quite sure how or when that changed. But it has been flipped on its head. Today, Scotland are expected to play second fiddle to an Ireland rugby team rounding off the season with another Triple Crown and keen to blow Ae Fond Kiss to all in Croke Park.

But it doesn’t mean that deep down there isn’t at age-old respect and admiration for all things Scottish. So, Scotland, you will know that it is nothing personal today if and when ye are sent homeward.

Tae think again.