At 9 o’clock on Saturday evening, when the women’s final had finished and the crowd were filtering out, a lone bagpiper proudly bedecked in kilt and sporran stood busking outside the Rod Laver Arena. The cheerful lilt of his music suggested unwavering faith in his countryman, Andy Murray. The 74-year wait is over. At least so he seemed to be saying, as did the printed message inside the case that lay open for the public to drop their loose change in: “Looking forward to some Murray magic.”

It is a curious comment on the lot of a British sportsman that, wherever you are in the world, your countrymen will find you. You are never completely alone, and thus it was that yesterday small pockets of Scottishness were emerging from disparate corners of Melbourne and converging on the men’s final.

Kilts? Tick. Faces painted? Tick. Keep on shouting until Roger Federer has finally snuffed out every remaining glimmer of Murray magic? Tick.

The local TV crews love them. One group of three Scots had been here every day of the week and by the time of their arrival yesterday, the number of TV interviews they had been asked for numbered 20. The cameras have been asking in particular for their Murray songs; their offers to do their Sue Barker songs have fallen slightly flat.

Regardless of the denouement to yesterday’s final, Murray has made a good story. At home, he is slowly shedding that image of the surly seeming adolescent; here, they never seemed to cotton on to that at all.

But is he not a Pom, that very worst of all evils? No, is your answer. Pominess is an English affliction, it is not one suffered by Brits universally. Australians, it seems, rather like our “Braveheart”.

Quite how much of an impression any of this will have made on Murray himself is questionable, and rightly so. His modus operandi as a professional has been to close the curtains.

Thus, around the time that the busker was entertaining Saturday’s departing crowds, Murray was finishing the pasta cooked for him by Miles Maclagan, his coach who has been doubling up here as the official cook of the night-before dinner.

Tennis players tend to be creatures of habit who will go to extraordinarily superstitious lengths to repeat the behaviour that has preceded a victory. Thus, because Maclagan cooked pasta on Monday night, their dinner on the eve of his match against Rafael Nadal, he has been repeating it ever since.

Evenings that did not precede a game here were therefore a form of light relief. On Friday night, Murray ordered in sushi from the Melbourne Nobu. Even for an athlete with a necessarily high calorific intake, Murray’s record for sushi consumption is impressive: 51 pieces in one sitting.

Such are the minutiae that have filled the life of the nearly man for the past fortnight. He has been staying in an apartment block near the centre of town, surrounded by a posse of young men — coach, trainers, physiotherapist — who are first and foremost his support team and second his best form of light relief. Even his mother, Judy, who has directed so much of his career, has been a spectator here more than a team member.

In the old days when Brad Gilbert was his coach, the monastic life on the road for Murray meant a year-long sequence of dinners-for-two. The accent now is to keep matters away from the court light-hearted.

Inside the apartment, then, Murray has been watching endless episodes of Gavin & Stacey. As his progress through the tournament continued, so the number of notable messages of good luck rose: Gordon Brown, Alex Salmond and David Cameron, the Scotland rugby team, David Beckham and Ricky Hatton, although probably most treasured would have been the one from his own dear Hibernian FC. Chris Hoy rings because he is in Perth and wants to come along to the final. You try to keep your life sane and you have politicians scrambling for space in your headlines.

That may explain why, at 3.30pm yesterday, when Murray was en route to the tennis, he was talking not about politics or even match strategy for the final, he was instead obsessing about his fantasy football team, crowing about Matt Taylor — he is very enamoured with the Bolton Wanderers midfield player — and singing the praises of his striker, Jermain Defoe.

It is only when Murray arrives at Melbourne Park that he converges with his countrymen. The Scot on court and the Scots in the stands.

Murray’s fans were quirky. They were enthusiastic, bold and unfazed by the treatment that Federer was dishing out. But if this is part of the appeal of Andy Murray, so is his grace in defeat. Perhaps the best shot that Murray played all night was the one he unleashed totally spontaneously at the prize-giving ceremony afterwards.

“I can cry like Roger,” he said as he failed to stifle his emotions. “It’s just a shame I can’t play like him.” And that is just another reason why the Scot in Melbourne will be welcome back.