Over the next month his team will face what may be the toughest challenge in world sport during the Rugby League Four Nations, but Steve McCormack is long past the stage of being overawed by anything that confronts him as head coach of the Scotland rugby league team.

By any standards his on-going 12 year tenure would be remarkable but only when the thankless nature of the job, set against the resources that have been at his disposal are fully grasped can there be the slightest understanding of the commitment it has taken to stick with it.

In essence the 43-year-old Northern Englishman’s main task in these embryonic days for international rugby league in general and Scotland in particular, has been to identify players who are qualified to play on the relatively rare occasions that he gets the chance to field a team, then ensure they have the attitude required to contribute.

To place that in context one of his first successes on taking up the job was drawing the young Danny Brough into the fold and the future Super League ‘man of steel’ who was also short-listed with modern greats Greg Inglis and Sonny Bill Williams for the international player of the year award because of his leadership of Scotland in the 2013 World Cup, has rarely been an absentee since. Yet the man who is by far the most capped in the current 24-man squad and will match the national record if he plays in all three Tests over the next month, has made a total of just 20 appearances in those 12 years.

“We’ve probably had to build three teams in my time with Scotland,” is McCormack’s assessment.

“From 2004 to 2008 (another World Cup year), then the players get older so we built another team to 2013 and now we’ve had to do the same.”

That 2013 World Cup campaign which saw them reach the quarter-final was an unexpected joy because for all that McCormack had some players available from the respective hemispheres’ top competitions – Europe’s Super League and Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) – there were also a fair number of part-timers up against Tongan, Italian and American sides packed with ex-pats who ply their trade in the NRL.

Yet McCormack considers the following year’s performance, which saw his side qualify for this Four Nations competition by becoming European champions – albeit in a competition from which England is withheld – as their greatest in his time in charge.

“I think 2014 was all the more remarkable because we didn’t bring our NRL players over then,” he noted.

“I was disappointed the team didn’t quite get the credit it deserved in 2013 and more so the year after. How many Scottish teams have been European champions?

“We got some really good press coverage and Scotland should be very proud of any team that does well. It’s a minority sport and we’ve got that challenge. They love their sport and are a very passionate people the Scots and it would be great if people just recognised a little bit more.”

Undeterred he continued the rebuilding process that started so impressively at that stage to the extent that only five or six of those who started the World Cup campaign are likely to be on the field when Scotland face Australia in next week’s tournament opener.

“It’s a young team,” McCormack noted.

“Apart from Danny there aren’t many that are very experienced and that’s great for the future of Scotland.”

Brough’s influence is central to setting the right tone.

“I trust Danny and vice versa and he’s one of the biggest names in the UK sport. He’s been with us since humble beginnings when we were struggling to get a team,” said McCormack.

“The key at international you’re dealing with a lot of egos. We’re now dealing with superstars of the game. The Scotland team has players who are known around the world so when they come through the door I’m not interested in where they’re from, how many NRL or Super League appearances they’ve got. We have a no big head policy, we always have had and always will have.

“That’s driven by the staff as well who I think are very humble, hard-working people I think. Straight from the off the players know there are some non-negotiables from my point of view then they set the culture.”

Within that there is a realism that fits well with this northern working class sport and McCormack knows it is almost unimaginable that his team could win a game, let alone reach the final following the round-robin stages.

“Success for us is what it always has been, getting the best we can out of this squad,” he said.

“No team in the competition will work harder. I keep on about culture and environment and from top to bottom we’ll prepare as well as, if not better than any other team. We’ve proven in past tournaments we can perform and if we can do that I think we’ll be a valued team in this competition.

“Everybody’s written us off, probably rightly so. No team outside the top three’s ever won a game in the history of this competition so that just goes to show how difficult this task is. But that’s great for us. We can’t wait and we’re a very determined bunch of people.”

Scotland face a Cumbrian Select XIII in a warm-up match in Barrow tonight, Australia in their tournament opener in Hull next Friday, England in a fireworks night double-header which also sees the antipodean giants confront one another in Coventry, then New Zealand in Workington on November 11.