Irvine can add professional polish to the Magners set-up

• Former SRU president Andy Irvine will combine his role with the Lions and the Magners League Picture: SNS

Irvine helped plot a new route for Scottish rugby when in 2005 he was elected unopposed as its first president not to have come through the traditional club route. He has now been handed the task of helping to mould the Celtic and Italian league competition into a more efficient operation as it prepares to enter its second decade.

Irvine is a director of Edinburgh-based property firm Jones Lang LaSalle and was not at yesterday's Cardiff launch of the new Magners League season due to business commitments. He is also still chairman of the British and Irish Lions Committee, which is itself moving to a more full-time operation.

The two chairmanships will be closely linked, however, as the move was part of a greater shift to bring the Lions and Six Nations organisations together and have all three under the stewardship of chief executive John Feehan operating out of those bodies' existing shared Dublin office.

The Magners League will change from having tournament director David Jordan, the former Glasgow chief executive, as its sole operating officer to a new board of eight voting representatives, two each from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Italy, and Irvine as its non-voting chair. Feehan will also head up a team of ten permanent members of staff, including Jordan and a finance director who will sit on the board.

The moves bring to an end Irishman John Hussey's seven-year chairmanship and addresses the controversy ignited by the SRU last season which threatened at one stage to block Italy's entry to the tournament. Then, the SRU insisted that the organisation was not professional enough to cope with the increasing demands of teams representing four nations, with its ancillary broadcast, sponsorship and logistical needs.

After a series of heated meetings between the Celtic representatives early in the year, Scottish rugby has emerged not only with the change demanded but also potentially with new influence through a Scots chairman respected as a former player and businessman.

SRU Director of Communications Dominic McKay said: "We certainly see this as a positive step and feel the move to strengthen the structure will have positive benefits for all the teams involved in the Magners League."

The Italian teams Aironi and Benetton Treviso were officially welcomed into the tournament in Cardiff yesterday and Franco Smith, the Treviso coach, admitted it will take them a little time to find their feet in the new arena. "It is huge for Italian rugby and will definitely improve the quality of players in Italy and the quality of the Italian national team, but it will be very different for the players and will take time. We have been training very hard to prepare for it, and technically and physically I think we will be ready, but mentally it is going to be a big test to play at this level week after week," he said

Josh Sole, the New Zealand-born Italian flanker who has joined Aironi, the newly-formed club representing the Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna regions around cities Viadana, Milan and Parma, is confident that his new team would come together quickly. They will have to as they open their new chapter in Italian rugby with a match away to Munster. "Most of the players have played together in international squads from age-group up," he said, "and the styles of play are the same. We all know each other very well and we have also been training for a while now so we will be ready.

"Some people have been writing us off already, and I've heard the suggestion that we might start well and fade, but I don't think that will happen. We know it's going to be a big challenge. It is a great honour to go to Munster for our first game. People who know their rugby in Italy know all about Munster and the famous red jersey, so we will respect them, but we also want to make our own mark on this competition and it would be quite special to do that in the first game in Ireland."

Edinburgh are the first Scottish side to face Aironi. Rob Moffat's team head to Viadana on Saturday 2 October. Both Aironi and Treviso play in Scotland on Friday 5 November, Treviso at Murrayfield and the new club in Glasgow, the week before Scotland's autumn Tests. The pro sides will be shorn of their internationalists, but Smith, a former Springbok, said that the Italian teams were working closely with Nick Mallett and the Italy set-up, and that their players will also be released for international duty in the same manner of players in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.