Keith Duggan Sideline CutIt was somewhat alarming to learn that the rugby man Matt Williams may have inadvertently kicked off a minor diplomatic incident between Scotland and his native Australia. Those who enjoyed Williams's contributions as a columnist on these pages and television analyst during the World Cup will know he speaks with what we like to call typical Aussie candour.

Still, the blunt declaration he made this week to the effect he got axed as coach of the Scottish national team on racial grounds has undoubtedly set tongues wagging through the Highlands and Lowlands.

Williams believes he was relieved of his posting halfway through his four-year contract primarily because he was not a Scot. This much is unequivocally true: Williams is fairly much the most un-Scottish person you could ever meet. It was PG Wodehouse who noted, "It is not hard to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

Well, Williams is a ray of sunshine and a high-wattage Bondi Beach ray at that. Frustrated at his inability to melt the Scots, he decided to speak out this week, airing views that will probably mean he won't be offered a complimentary round at St Andrew's - either in the bar or on the course - any time soon. Williams further reckoned the German Bertie Vogts, who was enduring a similarly miserable period trying to coax some decent performances out of the tartan soccer men, also foundered in the cold frost of Scottish antipathy to outsiders.

It was bold and contentious stuff and it probably all boils down to the natural gulf in understanding between a Southern Hemisphere optimist like Williams and Scottish people in general.

Like many people who have met Matt Williams, I found him enormously engaging and likeable. But I do remember fearing the worst when word broke that he had been appointed as coach of the Scottish team. It just seemed wrong. Matt was too sunny and expansive-minded and hopeful to be suited to the ideal of a Scottish sports coach. Scots folks don't like their managers to betray too much emotion, and they are particularly suspicious of overt happiness.

There were days when the camera lingered on Ian McGeechan, the last great Scottish rugby guru, sitting impassively in the crowd as he watched Finlay Calder and David Sole and the rest of that austere and deathly-pale generation of Scots rugby men use their dark materials to great effect on the rugby fields.

Those, of course, were the days, when Bill McLaren was the voice of rugby and the sight of John Jeffrey all but molesting some poor rookie prop from Somerset would merit from the man with the lullaby tones the light admonishment of "a bit of jiggery-pokery".

This was when Murrayfield was known as "the graveyard of Irish rugby". This was also when the Scots used to specialise in infuriating the English - an art they admittedly spent centuries finessing - by robbing them of Grand Slams. Who will forget the thrill of watching David Sole walk slowly and menacingly out onto the Edinburgh turf for the 1990 showdown against Will Carling's England? For those few seconds, we were all Scots - an affinity that was firmly ended when Finlay Calder knocked the stuffing out of Jimmy Staples a few years later.

But through those mighty days, McGeechan sat in such stony concentration that I am convinced the camera lingered on him just so the television director could make sure the poor chap hadn't expired in the afternoon cold. Scotland is a damn cold place - as Billy Connolly said, there are two seasons there: June and winter.

Scotland has, of course, much to shout about - the majestic setting of Edinburgh, the Highlands, arguably the world's best accent, a world-famous range of whiskies, Macbeth, Gregory's Girl, Kenny Dalglish, the Jesus & Mary Chain and so on - but they prefer stealth and a wee bit of a self-deprecating moan to the big shout.

As the Scottish philosopher Geddes McGregor, put it, "No one in Scotland can escape from the past. It is everywhere, haunting like a ghost".

That is the kind of crack they go on with - and we are as bad over here. But the natural Australian response towards such miserable musings would surely be along the lines of, "Buggah that, mate." As Russell Crowe said in celebration of his adopted country, "God bless America, God save the Queen, God defend New Zealand and thank Christ for Australia".

No messing about, in other words.

The Scottish gloom is a Celtic nations thing. Explicit displays of national self-confidence tend to backfire. Back in 1978, Scotland headed to the (Fifa) World Cup in Argentina with a glittering squad and the ill-advised promise of manager Ally McLeod that they would return home with "at least a medal".

They opened up Hampden Park so the players could enjoy a lap of honour - before the tournament began. Then they got booted out in the first round. It was the last excuse they would give England to have a chuckle at their expense.

The great football men Scotland has produced in the twentieth century - Matt Busby and Bill Shankley and Alex Ferguson - are, at the heart of it, rather forbidding and pensive figures, worriers and perfectionists, reared on the stuff of hard living and brimming with barbed little aphorisms and observations on life, the most famous, of course, being Shankley's old line about life, death and football.

The Scots see themselves as a breed apart, firmly wedged into the craggy north of old Albion, dark and funny and caustic and happy enough with their place in the sporting pantheon as dark horses, as the country and people who will bite when you least expect it.

You can bet Matt Williams went over there with a full heart. He would have eaten the haggis and worn the kilt. He would have sat beside Kenny Dalglish at a charity dinner and listened in confusion and awe to the mesmerising and wholly impenetrable dialect the old maestro has perfected. He would have watched Trainspotting and hauled out his old Rod Stewart albums and dusted down his Billy Connolly videotapes. He was probably ready to become a Scotsman to his very soul.

But that would have been utterly impossible. He would have had to abandon - exorcise - his natural, New World exhilaration and his can-do attitude and his spirit of adventure - all the qualities that have served him well down the years as a rugby coach.

Maybe, had Williams stayed for decades and roamed the eerie Highlands in the off-season, a little of the native Scottish melancholy might have seeped into his bones. It just could not be. The Scots are a mysterious and clannish race and the idea of their being led to rugby war by a clear-talking Australian raised on 300 days of sunshine a year - more than the Scots had in the entire 1900s - just could not work.

The same may well have been true of Vogts. How could the Germanic intellect, so rational and logical, ever hope to grapple with and understand the tricky, ever-shifting Scottish psyche?

The Scottish are tight but they are much too wrapped up in the complexity of being Scottish to have the time or energy to worry about other races. The thing is, Matt probably still has a soft spot for the country and, like any sportsman, believes in his soul he could have done better, given time. He is doubtless convinced he could have taken Scotland to new heights.

He may well be right.

But you know the Scots. They sent him homeward. Tae think again.