ONE of the many joys of going to Rome on Six Nations Championship duty is buying the match programme and reading the inevitable article about Scotland. The country, that is, not the rugby team – although there are articles about that too, and invariably more serious, less entertaining ones.

The chance to see ourselves as others see us is alleged to be educational, but in this case it merely provokes bemusement. The programme editors publish what seems like basically the same piece every time, perhaps on the grounds that, as the fixture only takes place every two years, we will have forgotten that we’ve read it before. Or perhaps, not unreasonably, they reckon we’ll all be so pissed that we won’t notice.

In fact, this series of articles predates the Azzurri’s move to Rome, having first been spotted by this misanthropic old mumbler on the 1998 trip to Treviso. That was the match that spelled an end to the reign of Scotland coaches Richie Dixon and David Johnston, and the programme for it, in those days before the Euro, was a snip at 2000 lire.

“What is there underneath the kilt?” was the title of the piece, which was the author’s way of asking what there is in Scotland apart from the rugby team. “Kilt, whisky and bagpipes,” the article began. “The proverbial stinginess of its inhabitants. The Loch Ness Monster... ”

There were honourable mentions in there as well for Burns, Scott, Stevenson and, er, Jim Kerr out of Simple Minds, but in essence this was a stereotypically romantic picture of Scots and Scotland. Apart from the stingy bit, that is, but you get the picture.

By 2002 the game had moved to the Stadio Flaminio in the capital, but the Italian rugby writers’ notion of us remained firmly in an imagined past. “Scotland the Brave” was the more flattering headline this time, but the ingredients were similar: “William Wallace, known as Braveheart... Nessie... the Highlands... Culloden.” And, just to let Italian readers know that they wouldn’t feel wholly out of place should they ever visit Scotland, there was an honourable mention for the Botticelli at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Even this year’s article – “Scotland: where there is not only rugby” – mentioned the Botticelli, although at least it found a link, albeit a contrived one, between the National Gallery and rugby itself. As well as the Botticelli, the National boasts the famous painting of the skating minister: The Reverend Robert Walker by Henry Raeburn (“born 10 years after Culloden”). And if you wander northwestwards from the Mound, you get to Raeburn Place, the scene of the world’s first international rugby match. Told you it was contrived.

The fact that Italy remain relatively recent additions to the erstwhile Five Nations Championship probably explains why these articles keep appearing, because the programmes produced by the other countries tend to presume that their readers have greater knowledge about the homeland of that day’s opponents. Even so, it would be wrong to think that we Scots have liberated ourselves from all stereotypical notions about how the rest of the Six Nations behave.

At least when it comes to rugby, we can, in some cases, subscribe to old-fashioned ideas. Ireland have long since sloughed off the old notion that the state of their team can be critical but not serious – their golden generation saw to that -– but when it comes to Wales and France we still all too readily pay obeisance to the idea that the form of both teams goes up and down more often than a clown’s trousers.

Our concept of Italy is not so much stereotypical as built on reality: they are often the only side likely to be more useless than our own. And as for England? A good 20 years after Dean Richards was at the height of his powers, we often still think them of as being dull, forward-dominated, stick-it-up-your-jumper dinosaurs.

The point is, no matter what ideas from the past we may cling to, rugby teams tend to play in a very similar style to each other these days. Football teams have the luxury of setting up in different formations, or of sitting back and being defensive, but to a large extent the laws of rugby militate against such variety.

More pertinently, Wales do not appear to have had too many downs recently, while France, by contrast, have had precious little to celebrate. The French have traditionally been seen as cavaliers, but Guy Noves, their ‘new’, 62-year-old coach, appears to have injected some glum roundhead ways into their play.

Quite a few of us will be hoping that the divergence between those two countries continues this weekend. Wales have been the best team in the tournament, but face a titanic struggle against England on Saturday. France have been uninspired, and, while they have two wins from three games, they will probably need more than dull bludgeoning to get past Scotland. It is if the French return to their old stereotypical ways at Murrayfield that we – you, me, Nessie and the rest, not forgetting Jim Kerr – should start to worry.