Andy Irvine in pole position to be named manager of Lions for 2013

The British and Irish Lions will elbow the Heineken Cup off the rugby pages tomorrow when they are expected to announce the appointment of Scotland legend Andy Irvine as manager for the 2013 tour to Australia.

• Irvine's recruitment would be a boost for Scottish rugby

The former president of the Scottish Rugby Union is keen to extend his long association with the Lions which stretches back to 1974 when he first toured South Africa as a 22-year-old player. Irvine toured three times in total as a Lion, with further trips to New Zealand in 1977 and South Africa again in 1980.

The appointment of the manager will be accompanied by the announcement that HSBC has renewed its sponsorship of the Lions.

Ian McGeechan is the only other obvious candidate for the position of Lions manager. However, he is contracted to Bath as director of rugby and is unlikely to be available.

Irvine's likely recruitment will be a boost for Scottish rugby, which has failed to make much of a mark on the last two Lions tours. Two hookers, Gordon Bulloch and Ross Ford, were the only Scots to make Test appearances in 2005 and 2009 respectively, both off the bench and both in the final international.

Guy Richardson, the former Scotland team manager, has already been appointed as the Lions' director of operations for 2013, and with Irvine managing the tour Scottish players should have a better chance of making their mark in Australia. There are at least half a dozen Scots who will challenge for the Test match 22, including candidates from all rows of the scrum, several scrum-halfs and the odd outside back.

Irvine's biggest challenge will be to appoint the coach to earn the Lions a long-overdue series triumph. They haven't enjoyed a winning tour since the 1997 sojourn to South Africa. He will work in consultation with the Lions committee, now chaired by Gerald Davies, who managed the 2009 tour to South Africa. No coach will be appointed until after the World Cup, which makes next year's tournament in New Zealand all the more important for Scotland's Andy Robinson, who must be amongst the front runners to be Lions coach in 2013. The Englishman is a little like McGeechan in that he has experience of Scotland, England and the Lions, both as a player - in Australia in 1989 - and as an assistant coach in 2001 and 2005.

Robinson is contracted to the SRU up to and including the 2012 Six Nations and if the Scots enjoy a successful World Cup campaign Irvine and SRU chief executive Gordon McKie could be elbowing each other out of the way to secure Robinson's signature. The water has been further muddied by a report last week that Bath want Robinson back.

The Scotland coach, meanwhile, will announce on Wednesday his squad for the autumn Tests against New Zealand, South Africa and Samoa. There are likely to be few surprises as Robinson has already stated that he does not envisage any World Cup "bolters" at this stage.Finally, it looks like David Wilson, Grant McKelvey and Peter Wright will land the plum coaching jobs at Scotland U-17, U-18 and U-20 level respectively when the official announcement is made. The big surprise is the omission of Craig Chalmers from even the U-20s support staff where he has been operating for the last couple of years.