Scotland rugby coaching summit hailed a success

THE desire of Scotland's international coaches to build greater fraternity throughout the country was given a thumbs-up at Inverleith on Sunday after the first major conference involving around 70 of the nation's top club coaches.

Various efforts have been made in the past to bring coaches together, but few on this scale and there is little doubt that it makes sense. Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, his assistants Gregor Townsend and Graham Steadman, and specialist coaches Stevie Scott, Duncan Hodge and Neill Potts, all helped to lead aspects of coaching with representatives from the 36 Premiership clubs.

Scott, the former Melrose, Edinburgh Reivers and Scotland hooker, who is the senior specialist skills coach for the Scotland team, co-ordinated the day. He said: "I'm pleased that we've shared knowledge and demonstrated that it's not about any magic solution but it is about performing your skills to the best you can.

"The feedback from today has been positive and we are certainly keen to do other high performance coaching days with different levels of the game."

Players from Scotland's three representatives in the British & Irish Cup - Currie, Ayr and Melrose - and some of the country's top young players were called on to help demonstrate while Glasgow Warriors full-back Bernardo Stortoni and Edinburgh and Scotland prop Allan Jacobsen also took part.

Ally Donaldson, coach of Premier One champions Currie, said he found it "very informative, very positive", while Bob Wylie, head coach at Premier Division 2 Falkirk, added: "I found it to be a good way of reinforcing what we are trying to do at club level. At the start of your coaching career you try to find some kind of 'Da Vinci Code' to the whole process but what this underlined was that it's about getting your basic skills right."