A FOREIGN coach, a Scotland team still widely seen as toothless, and a man very much in the firing-line. As the RBS 6 Nations arrives at Murrayfield this afternoon, perhaps Matt Williams still feels a vague kinship with the late, largely unlamented Berti Vogts.

The danger faced today by Williams, the Scotland rugby coach, is precisely that which confronted Vogts, the recentlyaxed Scotland football manager, only four months ago.

Like Vogts back then, a rare ray of optimism has suddenly befallen Williams and his Scotland team following their gutsy, if unstylish, performance in losing 16-9 in Paris last week.

There is only one question in the minds of the legions who will f lood towards Murrayfield this afternoon to watch Scotland play Ireland: was Paris a false dawn?

There are remarkable parallels to be drawn between Williams and Vogts, but the most unnerving is this. Like Williams, Vogts also presided over a string of depressing results. Like Williams, Vogts also had an abrupt upturn in fortune - his own Paris if you like - when his Scotland team took the lead and then battled to a draw against mighty Spain amid a rainstorm in Valencia in October.

It was the beginning of the end forVogts. His media sweetheart-status lasted little over two weeks before ever more gleaming knives were brandished. We finished Vogts off in a bloodbath of editorial slaughter when Moldova humbled Scotland in a World Cup qualifier, and the German's poor results became too persistent to ignore.

"Give me time, I need time, " Vogts repeatedly pleaded.

There was fat chance.

In Scotland, where bitterness and acrimony are almost endemic attributes of our small-country status, Williams may not be given "the time", as it is mythically put. In this country, in spite of our size, we have a proud tradition in rugby and football, and thus, as Vogts discovered, when decline and wholesale recovery around a team are to be negotiated, the one commodity which is usually missing is patience.

Instead, in Scotland, the background music for any national coach is much carping.

There is a further spooky analogy between Williams and Vogts. Under the German, an admittedly thinly-talented Scotland team endured a whole sequence of poor results. Countries such as Hungary and Austria - the footballing equivalent of rugby's Japans - doled out the most dreadful humpings.

Yet in the midst of it, if Vogts said it once he said 10 times:

"Definite progress is being made. I can see it. In two years' time Scotland is going to have a very exciting football team."

Observing Williams intermittently, some have been alarmed by his blatant plagiarising of Vogts' script.

Not just after last weekend in Paris, but even before then, when other Scottish rugby fans were mopping their tears with towels, the Australian would be blowing about how much progress was being made.

"This is a very exciting time for the Scotland international team - this side is developing, " said Williams last month in anticipation of the 2005 6 Nations.

But Williams also has what Vogts never had, which, for want of a better phrase, is a sheen of authority. Williams has that southern-hemisphere coaching aura about him, which in rugby carries considerable weight.

A tough, articulate, self-preserving man, Williams certainly won't be knocked around in the way in which the timorous Vogts was.

"He has knowledge, he has authority, he speaks well, he has a reputation, " one Englishbased rugby writer said of Williams yesterday. "Ultimately, results will determine it, but it is impossible to find a logic which says that, in appointing Williams in 2003, the SRU made a mistake."

Yet Scotland need to build on their Paris performance against Ireland today, otherwise Williams will find himself being cast back among the gloom-mongers.

Thus far, two wins in 13 internationals is not the sort of record from which anyone can draw optimism. Certainly, if Scotland repeat their dismal 2004 RBS 6 Nations form under their Australian coach and fail to win a point over the next four weeks, Williams will have a fight on his hands keeping his job.

In the survival stakes, Williams has one other immense advantage over the reputation of Vogts. Those who despaired of Vogts' ability from the start - even despite the fact that he had managed Germany, one of Europe's leading football powers, for eight years - could always cite a bunch of SFA jotter-blotters who had appointed him in the first place.

In the case of Williams, his critics have no such get-out.

Two no less esteemed figures in world rugby than Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer personally hand-picked Williams following the success he had at Leinster, so it is self-evidently an appointment which deserves time to succeed.

Either that, or the only other conclusion to be reached is that McGeechan and Telfer didn't know what they were talking about.

Results define the fate of any coach in any sport, and Williams desperately needs a good result today. A good performance - the objective he has focused on the most - can no longer have primacy after 14 matches.

Yet most impartial rugby onlookers would probably agree with what the BBC's John Beattie told me yesterday.

"I rate the guy, " said Beattie of Williams. "I think he knows exactly what he's doing. He's no fool. He's got his team playing a very simple game and I think you saw the benefits of that in Paris last week. Either in my day, or even before in a socalled more glorious period for Scottish rugby, we never came anywhere near as close to winning in Paris as Scotland did last week.

"Under Williams, Scotland go out and play with their heart on their sleeves. If that wasn't the case, you'd know something wasn't right. But if it is the case, and they lose, you've just got to say, hey, that's life."

The hour is nigh once more in the on-going struggle for survival by Matt Williams.