Franco Smith is not a man known for wild displays of emotion. Generally speaking, the Glasgow Warriors head coach usually wears a facial expression that would turn Medusa to stone.
But there was a raw sense of candour in Smith’s voice when he spoke to journalists in the aftermath of Glasgow’s defeat to Leinster in the URC semi-finals last weekend.
Deep in the bowels of the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Smith had tears in his eyes when asked to assess Glasgow’s season as a whole and the effort that had gone into the defence of their title.
He expressed a huge sense of pride whilst also pointing to the strain that has been put on the squad throughout the campaign due to injuries to so many key players.
In terms of the options available to him, things are unlikely to improve much next season due to the cutbacks being made on foreign imports.
Henco Venter and Sebastian Cancelliere, both league winners last year, are being moved on, partly due to budget constraints and partly due to a greater emphasis on the promotion of young Scottish talent.
Glasgow Warriors head coach Franco Smith was not a happy man at the weekend
Henco Venter has been superb for Glasgow but he was told he had to move on
David Nucifora is charged with overseeing Scottish Rugby’s new strategy
The man overseeing this new masterplan is David Nucifora, Scottish Rugby’s performance director who has been tasked with revamping the player pathway and academy system.
Smith sounded – and looked – like a man at the end of his tether last weekend. He would never be foolish enough to be openly critical of the SRU and their new head honcho.
Not when Smith continues to be linked with the Scotland job. After all, Nucifora could soon be his boss. If Smith was to open fire, it would almost certainly be career suicide.
Yet, nonetheless, there was enough in what Smith said to make it clear that he is not at all happy with some of the decisions being made above his head at Murrayfield.
As the man who transformed Glasgow from a team of also-rans into champions, he feels he is deserving of greater support and more of an input in terms of squad composition.
But it’s Nucifora who is calling the shots now and, as and when Gregor Townsend finally departs, he will be kingmaker with regards to the identity of Scotland’s next head coach.
It felt like a shoo-in at one point that Smith would be next. But that feels less certain now given his comments and the raw emotion and frustration in his voice at the weekend.
It’s not out of the question he could well walk away. If Scottish Rugby allows one of the best coaches we’ve had in years to slip from their grasp, serious questions will be asked.
But this is the new world under Nucifora. A new age where he is now making a lot of the big calls at Murrayfield with regards to budgets and strategy.
As Mail Sport have reported, the SRU have been criticised for their handling of the academy cuts and restructure as outlined and designed by Nucifora.
After a nine-month gestation period following his initial appointment, Nucifora’s plans are now being rolled out to clubs and young players across the country.
At a time like this, it is reasonable that we might expect to hear from the man himself. But there was only a vague off-the-record briefing with journalists last week.
Instead, players and parents were invited to join a Zoom call last night with Kenny Murray, Scotland Under-20s head coach and head of player transition, and Neil Graham, the SRU’s head of game development.
Nucifora was conspicuous by his absence – and that’s the one big issue that has been flagged up over recent weeks as these plans have come to fruition.
He continues to base himself full-time in Australia and only visits Scotland for select periods of the year.
Right now, the performance director is the single most important job in Scottish rugby – and yet we have a guy essentially phoning it in from Bondi Beach. It’s just not a good look.
The SRU’s stance on this is that Nucifora doesn’t necessarily need to be in the country all the time. His job is to determine the structures of the new system.
He will then entrust coaches and talent-spotters to go out and watch players and then feed back to him.
But if there’s a final call to be made on whether a young player should be promoted through the system or not, you can guarantee the head of department – Nucifora – will have a say in it.
So Scottish rugby will have this bizarre scenario where someone could be making a call on a player’s future without actually having seen them play.
Nucifora escaped a lot of scrutiny when he was doing the same job in Ireland. You can get away with that if the national team are winning more often than not.
But Scotland is different to Ireland. The structure of our club game is different and there is a smaller player pool from which to select.
It’s not a job where you can simply copy-and-paste from one country to another. If Scottish Rugby is to fix its player pathway system, the performance director should live and breathe the job.
Nucifora, with Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend, still spends a lot of time in Australia
They should be out in the field, watching players, and speaking regularly with clubs and coaches. Instead, we have Nucifora operating from the other side of the world for most of the year.
It gives the distinct impression of a man who is not fully committed to the job. It’s a job that demands total commitment and a connection with the environment in which he works.
Nucifora should have his finger on the pulse of everything that’s happening across age-grade rugby in Scotland, not treating it as some kind of part-time project.
Only time will tell whether his new vision will yield any genuine rewards for Scotland. But by choosing not to base himself here, he’s already created a rod for his own back.
He will also be on duty with the British and Irish Lions this summer on their tour of Australia. That’s a nice feather in his cap, but it’s valuable time spent away from the nuts and bolts of the day job.
The job which he is paid handsomely to do by the SRU. Just the same way as it’s the SRU who pay for his flights any time he can be bothered to travel over. Business class, of course.
If Nucifora is serious about improving the standard of young players across Scotland, it would be good of him if he actually bothered to turn up.
