STEWART MAXWELL talks a good game, but then you'd expect nothing less from the SNP's Minister for Sport and the Communities. The sporting side of his brief may be tiny by comparison with his other duties, but there are few areas of political life where it is as acceptable to be as jingoistic and, well, nationalistic as when you're talking about sport.

On many occasions, sport has proved an open goal for the SNP Government. There is enormous mileage in leading the charge on populist causes such as the opposition to a Great Britain football team at the 2012 Olympics and the imperative of an extra £150m of financial support for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Few votes have ever been lost by emphasising the importance of sport or getting behind Scotland's sports stars.

Yet sport can also be a minefield for the politicians who charge in, as the SNP have sometimes found to their cost. What looked at first like easy soundbites and grandstanding have turned out to be policy minefields. Take the abolition of SportScotland, one of the quangos formed under Labour which the SNP manifesto committed itself to incinerating. Only it was never that easy: it turned out that Lottery rules meant that without just such an organisation to distribute the money, there would be no money. The plan was quietly shelved and SportScotland sails serenely onwards.

More troubling for the SNP was the Beijing Olympics. Alex Salmond's contention that he'd get as much joy out of watching an Estonian or an Ethiopian competing as he would at watching a Welsh or English competitor in a Team GB shirt made him look at best churlish and obtuse, and at worst tainted by xenophobia. Maxwell has clearly learnt from the negative reaction to Salmond's sentiments.

"I loved every minute of the Olympics and cheered on the British athletes, of course I did," said Maxwell. "It was a purely emotional reaction because I was as wrapped up in the events as most people were. But yes, of course there were also times when I would cheer on, say, a French athlete in exactly the same way as I'd support a British competitor."

Maxwell further proved how politicians venturing into the sporting arena do so at their peril when he managed to raise the ire of Scots cyclist Chris Hoy, Britain's greatest Olympian, by suggesting that an independent Scotland team would see more Scots competing and would perform better than a British team. Given that Hoy and rower Katherine Grainger were part of collective medal-winning teams that included Welsh and English athletes, the cyclist felt that Maxwell's comments were not only inappropriate but smacked of political opportunism. He said so publicly, too, branding Maxwell's views "ridiculous".

The minister is, however, unrepentant. Not only does he contend that "both I and Chris Hoy agreed that he never said that" but he still maintains against all the evidence that there were Scots who were unable to compete in Beijing for Britain when they would have been able to compete for a Scotland team, citing Shirley Robertson. In an almost entertaining example of bloody-mindedness, he also still insists, to general bemusement at the International Olympic Committee, that there is no reason why Scotland can't have its own team within the current rules.

Where Hoy and Maxwell are in agreement, however, is on the need to boost the quality of Scotland's sporting infrastructure. A recent Audit Scotland report said that £2bn needs to be spent on sports facilities in Scotland, and it's a figure Maxwell accepts. He also acknowledges that until those facilities are built many of Scotland's best athletes will train and compete wherever they have the best chance of success. "I've never seen that as a problem," he says. "The world's best athletes go to where they can best maximise their potential, and that's not a weakness. But people shouldn't be forced to go (to England]. Take the cyclists: they have to train in Manchester at the moment, but when the Glasgow velodrome is in place they should be able to train there.

"Our judo players are a case in point: they are being told they may have to move to Essex when we have really good facilities in Ratho. I'm concerned not only that UK Sport are making decisions forcing Scottish athletes out of Scotland, but that there's not a single national training centre here (in Scotland] when there are lots that could be based here – such as curling, mountain biking, canoeing etc. Those are the sort of issues which really concern me."

Maxwell certainly has a point, but he is on shakier ground elsewhere. He constantly compares Scotland to Jamaica, for instance, as if an independent team would be able to replicate the Caribbean island's outstanding Olympic performance of 11 medals in 100m, 200m and 400m sprint events simply because Scotland and Jamaica are both "small" countries. He makes no mention of the fact that nations of comparable size nearer to home generally did badly at Beijing. Ireland, for instance, only won one silver medal and two bronzes, less than Chris Hoy on his own.

Yet it's fairly pointless to take an SNP politician to task for viewing all areas of life through a nationalist lens, including elite sport. In many ways, it's better to judge by what happens at grassroots level, where there's no overt political capital to be made, just lives to be improved. On this front Maxwell is more impressive. Sports professionals who have worked with him talk of a minister who has worked hard to master the brief and to improve facilities through extra resources. Maxwell himself says that the primary aim of sport "has to be to get our kids away from drinking Buckfast and pursuing unhealthy lifestyles that will impact upon their life chances – the best way to do that is by driving participation numbers in sport upwards."

Maxwell is animated as he talks of PE's place in the curriculum, of the cashback scheme which has put £5m into grassroots sports clubs, and of a scheme he has championed which has resulted in more than 600 primary school teachers being trained to take sports lessons. With a young daughter still at school, he believes he understands the need to make sport a normal part of everyday life and to inculcate the exercise habit early on. "My daughter loves swimming and doesn't see it as exercise, she sees it as fun," he says.

Maxwell's own approach to sport was, he admits, shaped by his own upbringing. Although he "never excelled at any sport", his own interest in sport was, he says, kindled by his schooldays "at a bog-standard comprehensive" in Stirling where his maths teacher inspired him to get involved. His main sport as a kid was rugby, where he was a back. He reckons it's too painful to play these days, and at the age of 44 it's easy enough to let him off that one. Besides, more sedate activities such as cycling ("I'm Lycra-free though"), badminton and "very bad golf" have filled the void.

Yet rugby remains his true sporting love and the backdrop to his earliest sporting memories. He was present when Scotland beat France at Murrayfield to win the 1984 Grand Slam, but it was an event six years later which perhaps more neatly explains how his sporting and political philosophies mesh.

"My greatest sporting memory is, without a doubt, the 1990 Grand Slam. Tickets were hard to come by but my friend Scott and I had one and managed to pick up a second in the pub just before the game. What happened that day was so unexpected in so many ways, and so memorable because of that. Afterwards, there were all these English fans wandering around shell-shocked, wearing T-shirts and scarves that had been printed up in expectation of their win. It was an awe- inspiring performance by the Scotland team, the sort of day you'll always treasure."