Cox has long been one of the most eminent, albeit self-effacing, sports psychologists in Scotland and his skills could be critical to the national rugby team’s prospects of success as they set off on the long haul to next year’s World Cup in New Zealand.

The first step on that journey took place on Friday when Andy Robinson’s squad, and the 17-strong management team of which Cox is a member, set off on their two-Test tour to Argentina. His inclusion raised a few eyebrows when it was announced last month, but the truth of the matter is that Cox has been a central figure for the Scottish squad since last August, when he was invited to the national training camp in St Andrews.

It has not been stated explicitly, but in personnel terms the Argentina trip is pretty clearly a dry run for the support team Robinson is likely to want beside him when the World Cup gets under way in just over 15 months. There is, to be frank, no other real justification for such a top-heavy management contingent in South America – the group also includes a lawyer and a nutritionist – save that Robinson will want to know that 
everyone can work effectively together.

So what does Cox bring to the party? Well, there is the scientific detachment of one who analyses all sporting activities
as sets of behaviours, but he also offers the passion for rugby that has been a consistent theme of his 60-odd years. Besides which, he knows his way around Murrayfield already, having been part of the back-up team in 1995 and 1996, two seasons when the decline of previous years was reversed and Scotland ended successive Five Nations campaigns in Grand Slam battles against England.

The best combination for success in sport is to have fire in the belly and ice in the mind

As is usually the case in this business, regime change did for him back then, but he never lost his enthusiasm. “The fact I wasn’t involved for a while didn’t stop me coming here and paying my money instead of getting a freebie,” he smiled. “It wasn’t a frustrating experience, though. I’ve worked with five top football clubs down the years and I accepted with each that my time would come to an end, usually when the manager changed. I’ve always had plenty of work to do.”

Much of that work has been low-key, well below the radar: working for competitors who would no sooner own up to consulting a sports psychologist than they would provide vivid details of an embarrassing rash. Even as the discipline is becoming increasingly respectable, Cox abides by a rigorous professional code of never talking about clients unless they happen to talk about him first. In which context, it was only when Paul Lawrie did just that after winning his Open Champ-ionship title at Carnoustie in 1999 that he was really thrust into the public domain.

The sudden wave of attention that followed was unsettling for Cox – an ironic state of affairs for a man whose craft involves tutoring others to keep their cool in testing circumstances. A few years later he took early retirement from Edinburgh University – he stresses that he is a psychologist who works in sport, emphasising his belief in a solid grounding in the discipline – and took on a roving consultancy brief. His route back to Murrayfield was via secondment from the Scottish Institute of Sport, although his enthusiasm for rugby is such that an arrangement that ought to take up two days of his week typically swallows much more time.

“I’m here to do a job,” he said. “I’ll do it to the best of my abilities. That I only get paid for two days doesn’t matter.”

Cox’s enthusiasm for the role is not unconnected to his admiration for Robinson. Having worked closely with many frontline coaches down the years, he knows a good one when he sees one.

He said: “In Andy Robinson we have a world-class coach. I’ve worked with a lot of coaches and he is top notch. He has the ability to analyse any situation in rugby, to put detail on it, and to take the boys out there and create practice situations in which they actually test themselves.”

All very well, but mutual admiration in the backroom will count for nothing
if Cox’s skills cannot be made to bear fruit between the touchlines. His alchemy has limitations, however, and the suspicion remains then even the most psychologically sorted duffers are still duffers deep down, and apt to finish second to a side of highly-skilled basket cases. What Cox can do is try to ensure that Scotland’s players are not held back by what happens between their ears.

“Every day we’re learning more and more about how the brain works and what a wonderful computer it is,” he said. “The most recent developments are in that line, in what we call psychobiology. But it could be another 200 years before science finally defines what makes man tick.

“Among other things I talk to the squad as a whole. I’ve done workshops on thinking, and why people think in certain ways. We talk about task-
relevant thinking, which is simply about keeping your mind on the job.

“In rugby, you can be hit hard or struggling for air in the last 20 minutes, or both. It can be very hard to concentrate on the task, and you concentrate on yourself instead. What I do is try to develop players who can offset that. Once you raise their awareness of what will happen under normal circumstances you create an opportunity for them to interfere with that sequence of events.”

One of Cox’s favourite expressions is that the best combination for success in sport is to have fire in the belly and ice in the mind. From that, he talks about how too much ice can extinguish the fire, and how too much fire can melt the ice. Yet the sort of homespun aphorisms that weigh down the shelves in every bookshop’s self-help sections are far from his normal register, as is the sort of rampant self-promotion that is all too common at the more disreputable end of his trade.

“There are some good businessmen out there,” he said when the name of one of the more obvious snake-oil salesmen was mentioned. “There are a lot of people who specialise in 
motivation, which isn’t a difficult subject if you want to read up on it.”

Instead of telling his clients what wonderful people they are, Cox invites them to understand, by way of clear and cool-headed analysis, just what they have to do to give themselves the best chance of success. In rugby, that means breaking down activities into component parts and unloading the emotional baggage that can often interfere. From there, the real challenge is to make sure that the correct application of skills becomes habitual, so that everything works on the burning deck of an international pitch as well as it does in a training session. “Repetition,” says Cox, “is the mother of skill.”

All very practical, but Cox also believes in the existence of the Scottish inferiority
complex. “There is a history of that in Scottish sport,” he said ruefully. “We’re far more capable than we believe ourselves to be.” If the good doctor can do anything to cure that perennial ailment then his time will have been well spent.