WFH David Nucifora backed by Scottish Rugby chief despite lack of time in the country and not being around for the 'long term'

Alex Williamson has given his backing to David Nucifora as Scottish Rugby’s performance director and says he has no problem with the Australian not being a more visible or high-profile figure.

Nucifora will spend this summer as part of Andy Farrell’s backroom ticket for the British and Irish Lions tour to his homeland.

But Williamson says he has no issue with how Nucifora works as long as he continues to execute his plan to improve the Scottish Rugby player pathway.

‘David was brought in to create a transformational change in our high performance and pathway environment and that’s exactly what he’s doing,’ he said.

‘David is right now continuing to do all the interviews for those senior roles, he’s done every single one of them. He has designed the structure, he’s embedding the structure and he’s very hands-on.

‘We always knew he was going on the Lions [tour] and there is some benefit for us in doing that. The Scotland team are hopefully only a few miles from Lions training camp as and when they need more players and I have no issue with where David is.

‘But he was never going to be the guy who breathed all of the sort of warmth and energy into that in the long term, that’s going to be someone else’s job. And that’s why that’s a preoccupation for me is to get that role right (to find Nucifora’s successor).

‘I certainly have a mind’s eye as to how we’re going to go with that. I don’t think David’s role dissipates entirely but I think he becomes more of a sort of a mentor that makes sure that when there’s a temptation to drift that we bring it back in.

‘The clarity of what we’re introducing - which is essentially splitting the national teams off from the pathway roles so that there’s no crossover between the two, they don’t dilute - that is the primary focus and the thing that will make the difference.’

Glasgow head coach Franco Smith had expressed a concern that both the professional clubs would need to run with fewer players next season.

Williamson replied: ‘What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to intensify the investment in a slightly smaller group of players who propel more quickly and there is a question absolutely as to whether that has a short-term impact on performance.

‘But when you really look at the number of high quality young players that are sitting in and around both those squads I think that we should feel confident that whilst they may need some sort of blooding in to first team rugby, we’ve got a ton of quality.

‘We’re essentially saying if there’s a Scottish player who’s good enough they’ll play and I think we need to encourage that because if we don’t do that I don’t see how we can propagate enough players into the senior first 15 to make us more competitive than we currently have in the 31.’

Mail Sport revealed last week that cuts were already underway to decimate the number of young players operating in academies and Williamson conceded some of that could have been handled better.

‘I think that some of that, and I’m not saying all of it, but some of that was a bit clunky. There were definitely some communication issues there that just didn’t land well.

‘And as a consequence of that, what was intended to mean one thing actually meant something else, in terms of the closing down of the season actually was perceived to be a closing down of a program.

‘But notwithstanding that, we are squeezing the number of players that are going to come through the pathway so that we really intensify our interventions from 16 upwards on those players we think have got every opportunity to play under 20s and then convert into the national team. And so we will see fewer players joining the pathway for sure.

‘I think that if I were to say I was comfortable (with the process) it wouldn’t be true because I think all of this is yet to bed in. We’re literally at the structural stage so we are going to find the whole way through the process with bits that aren’t quite working, that need some tweaking.

‘And so I’m confident that there is a huge amount of energy, drive, passion and desire in the club game to pop these players out but the new articulation of what good looks like is obviously going to take a bit of time to bed in.

‘Gav Scott and his team of regional development officers and so on are all engaged at a very micro level in how we’re going to do this, so I’m confident we’ll get there. But today, no, I’m sure we’ve got work to do.

‘The work that Gav’s doing for instance engaging the state schools in rugby and getting those state schools to connect into clubs is really important and so you’ll actually see that he’s putting a lot of the money that we give into the rugby development team into that initiative.

‘And also this kind of club and schools cup - the best of the best if you like - is intended to make sure that we’re not just focusing on just a small number of schools but we’re looking at how we build our pathway.

‘Of course, we’re also going to lean on the places that have got really high performing environments themselves and that will be part of it, of course.’