Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend has extended his contract to 2027
When the most powerful man in Scottish Rugby says that more of the same from the national team is not good enough anymore then you know that an ante has been upped.
As performance director, David Nucifora is that man and that was most certainly his message on Wednesday when formally announcing a battery of new appointments and new thinking on the way the game is run in Scotland.
Gregor Townsend has had his contract extended to 2027. Franco Smith, the Glasgow Warriors coach, is sticking around, too.
A whole new player pathway programme has been unveiled with specific experts coming in from the National Basketball Association (NBA), the MLB (Major League Baseball), Team Andy Murray, GB Aquatics and from the world of Artificial Intelligence.
Closer to home, Al Kellock, managing director of Glasgow and totem of the club, is the surprise pick for head of pathways performance and is, possibly, in line to take over from Nucifora in the top performance job when the time comes.
All of those heads of new departments are tasked with the job of developing talent for the future, but the here and now was mostly about Townsend.
Nucifora is a fan. He’s totally behind Townsend, admires the work he has done and feels he deserves a greater chance to improve on it. He describes him as world class.
“He’s in a position now where we’ve got a team that is maturing nicely, leading into a World Cup in 2027,” said Nucifora of Townsend. “He’s now got a high-performance department around him that’s got a lot more support, a lot more bulk.
“Gregor’s a person that is constantly seeking to improve, to get better. He’s a curious coach. He wants to find ways to evolve both himself personally, but also to evolve the team. I think once you lose that drive and curiosity to improve, that’s when you know that head coaches have probably run their time and Gregor’s definitely not in that space. He’s as keen or keener than he’s ever been.”
Is more of the same good enough when it comes to Six Nations and World Cup performance, Nucifora was asked. “Well, no, in high performance you never sit still,” he replied. “You always have to be evolving.
“So no-one ever is sitting there going, ‘I think I’ll just do the same as what I did yesterday’ because people just race past you in this business.”
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So, more resource for Townsend but also, it would appear, more pressure to deliver, albeit his chief executive, Alex Williamson, would not talk about specific targets.
“We’re not putting wins and losses as a hard target,” he said. “I just think that you collapse in on yourself on that basis.
“We are really focused on having the best coaches with what we think is a really talented group of players with more coming through our pathway and that we expect to land us in the very best place for the World Cup and, before that, the Six Nations.”
Williamson, was asked the same question about Scotland continuing to finish in and around fourth in the Six Nations and whether that was acceptable.
“No, I don’t think that would be true of any part of any organisation regardless of whether it’s high performance or not because the moment you become satisfied with where you are, you are immediately going backwards at a rate of knots,” he said.
“We are extremely ambitious, we’re investing at a level in our high performance environment that Scottish Rugby has never invested before. I want to be the leading union in world rugby and this is the first articulation, I guess, of our intent.”
So, no pressure, then. Townsend will be given more support on physio and rehabilitation, nutrition and other areas. These are the pillars of the new initiatives announced by Nucifora and Williamson.
“I would say that Gregor has been hamstrung slightly by the way that our structure has been set up,” said Williamson. “We’re changing that now so going forward he’ll have a full-time high-performance environment that’s dedicated to him.
“For the first time the men’s national team will have dedicated strength and conditioning physios, nutritionists, coaching resources (that are not shared by other teams in the organisation),” said Williamson.
“Immediately, he’s getting an uplift of, let’s say, 40% in terms of actual available time from individuals and that’s a huge boon for him.
“And then beyond that we have a pathway which is being designed to bring players through not only quicker but also with all of those specialist skills already embedded.
“I certainly think that they’ve got all of the substance they need to be the very best version of the Scottish national team both men and ultimately for the women as well. We’re giving ourselves the very best opportunity to be successful.”
Scotland will play four games in the autumn against the USA, New Zealand, Argentina and Tonga. Their Six Nation campaign begins in Rome before the Calcutta Cup takes place in Edinburgh a week later. That will be Townsend’s 100th Test as Scotland coach.
Wales away, France at home and Ireland away complete the campaign, Townsend’s penultimate Six Nations. His best-place finish is third, which he achieved in 2023 and 2018. Scotland have finished fourth on five occasions on his watch.
Is that good enough? Is it more of the same? In investing so much time and money in trying to get Scotland moving forward on all fronts, a title challenge worthy of the name is surely the target now.
Townsend should enjoy the challenge, but the heat has been turned up a little, on him and on everybody around him.