As the Brough has led his Bravehearts into battle he has been bolstered by the presence at his side of one named Wallace.

All right, all right we hear you cry (mournfully echoing down the glens), enough of the overblown journalese. Do not shoot the messenger, however, or attack him with a claymore for that matter. A nickname that might not be to the taste of middle-class Scottish sensibilities is the choice of the Rugby League Scotland authorities themselves and in many ways it suits them perfectly.

Theirs is a team full of hard nuts from tough backgrounds who, in many cases, have limited knowledge of Scotland other than the doubtless rather sentimentalised view of the old country provided by parents and grandparents.

In reality, several of the Scots participating in the Rugby League World Cup share more in common in terms of their background with Mel Gibson than with the original heroes of the Wars of Independence.

However, under Steve McCormack's astute tutelage, that filmic connection has resulted in the creation of a formidable force of battle-hardened campaigners from both Australian and English rugby league who are driven by a deep desire to honour their kinsmen.

For little in the way of fees, these professionals are doing it for the cause and no-one has epitomised that more than Peter Wallace, the Aussie-Scot half-back whose steadying influence has proven invaluable alongside the sometimes gung-ho and always inspirational leadership of Danny Brough.

The last member of Scotland's 23-man squad to arrive ahead of the tournament, the 27-year-old Melbourne-born half-back only made his debut in the magnificent win over Tonga that has given the Scots a real chance of upsetting the odds by reaching the quarter-finals and he was surprised by what he encountered on joining them.

"I got into the camp about five days after the rest of the boys and I just felt like I slotted straight in," said Wallace. "For the majority of the group it's the first time together, but it's really good, a great bunch of blokes who have come together well and I think we're showing that on the field. We're a very tight-knit team."

Almost as soon as he arrived Wallace was whisked, along with the other newcomers from Down Under, across Hadrian's Wall to be given a flavour of the traditions they are representing. "It was great to see the history of the place," he said. "We went to the castles and learned all about that and then we went to the Wallace Monument which was pretty special for me, then we went to Edinburgh. It's a beautiful place. I loved it."

His grandmother having come from Dunfermline, the town in which Robert the Bruce's body is buried, he has long understood his heritage. "I've been aware of it when I was pretty young, and when we sign our first contracts in NRL we have to put down our eligibility, so I put down Scotland at that stage and here we are," he explained.

"I was going to play in the last World Cup but I was injured so pulled out, so it was great to get over this time."

It has not taken him long to embrace a familiar mind-set either, since he seems to have bought in wholeheartedly to the sort of siege mentality that so often serves Scottish teams well.

"We haven't been looked after by the World Cup organisers," Wallace suggested. "The schedule's killed us. We're going to have three games in nine days, we didn't get a game in Scotland, when every other European nation has had a game at home, so we've been a bit hard done by and in both the games I think we were worthy of a man of the match."

The extra recovery time their opponents were given made Sunday's draw all the more impressive, given that Italy had beaten the two more favoured British teams, England and Wales, in their previous matches, but there was still a sense of disappointment among the squad that they did not earn the win. Yet they also know they have already exceeded expectations and could yet do something extraordinary as Wallace pointed out. "We're a bit down because we know there were a couple of soft tries and a bit of bad luck, but we've got a chance now if we can beat the USA on Thursday so we just need to produce another effort like we have the last two games and give ourselves a shot.

"If you'd said to us at the start of the competition that if we win on Thursday we go through to the quarter-finals we'd have taken that."