Allan Massie: Farewell to Shane, a try-scoring phenomenon who lived by his wits

The statistics say just how good he has been: 57 tries in 86 internationals. To put this in perspective, the Scottish try-scoring record is held jointly by Ian Smith and Tony Stanger with 24 each. So the pair together are short of Williams’s tally. Of course, in any sport, statistics tell only part of the story. Shane Williams has been a delight to watch, a brilliant inventive nimble-footed runner.

When he first played for Wales, his cherubic appearance suggested that he was on day release from the church choir. He has grown up and bulked up since, without ever quite losing the look of a boy out on a spree, running rings round the grown-ups and making fools of them. At a time when wingers often seem to be chosen for their size and strength rather than their skills, he has continued to justify the claim that rugby is a game for players of all sizes and shapes. He dances round would-be tacklers rather than trying, like so many of his contemporaries, to run through them. His example should encourage other shrimps and lightweights. He was brave of course – you can’t play top-level rugby without a deal of courage – but it’s his wit and resourcefulness in attack for which we will remember him. It will be fitting, and no surprise at all, if he signs off with a try against Australia this afternoon – or even a brace of them.

Happily, there will be another light-footed player on the field today: young James O’Connor at fly-half for the Wallabies. He has played most of his rugby on the wing or at full-back, but in the absence of the injured Quade Cooper, he was slotted into the No 10 position against the Barbarians last weekend, and took to it like a duck to water, showing the invaluable ability to find space where there didn’t appear to be any.

Admittedly the Barbarians’ defence was ill-organised. All the same, O’Connor’s dummies and side-steps were bewildering. He is no giant either, though he has the strength to stand up in the tackle and offload, or indeed to offload deftly even as he is being brought to the ground. Some of his running last Saturday was of the highest class – in the Williams class indeed. Come to that, he looks a bit like a choir-boy himself too.

As things stand, Wales seem likely to start favourites for the Six Nations, now only two months away. This is principally on account of their performance in the World Cup, also because they have a mostly young team which is still developing. They may be without their two first-choice locks, Alun Wyn Jones and Luke Charteris, which will make their first match in Dublin especially tough, but they have the advantage of being in a three games home, two away season, and, best of all for them, they play France in Cardiff on the final afternoon. Today’s match is more important for Wales than for Australia, which, with home advantage, must make them favourites. I suppose they are likely to cheat the Welsh weather by closing the roof of the Millennium Stadium. That should ensure a cracking game between two sides that seek to play expansive rugby.

Meanwhile, Andy Robinson has been speaking about the disappointment of our World Cup and about finding ways to put right what went wrong.

Top of the list must be our inability to score tries, even allowing for the fact that the matches against Georgia, Argentina and England were all played in vile conditions. The trouble is that there has been a dearth of tries for years now. When did we last score four in a match in the Six Nations? Answer, against Italy at Murrayfield in 2003. We also scored four against Ireland in 2001, but for our last free-scoring season we have to go back to 1999 when, in the four matches of what was still the Five Nations, we scored 16, three at Twickenham, four against each of Wales and Ireland and a glorious five in Paris.

Sixteen tries in four games, with our current attack coach Gregor Townsend getting one in each of them!

So the present predicament is not new, can’t therefore be blamed on the current coaches; it’s a deep-rooted problem.

In six matches against France, for instance, from 2000-2005, we scored a grand total of two tries.

In the last three Calcutta Cup games at Murrayfield, in which we have been delighted to record two wins and a draw, we have failed to cross the English try-line.

Andy Robinson spoke of hoping to see lots of Scots in the Lions side to tour Australia in a couple of years. No Scottish back has played in a Lions Test since Townsend and Alan Tait did so in 1997.

No surprise really since our backs find it so difficult to score tries, unlike, say, Shane Williams, Brian O’Driscoll, Tommy Bowe and the belly-flopping Chris Ashton.