McGeechan wants structural change

Former Scotland coach Ian McGeechan believes the top division in Scottish club rugby should be streamlined.

McGeechan feels the league should be reduced from 12 teams to eight and has called for a third professional team.

"In a numbers game, if you want to keep the top end strong, you need an eight-team Premiership," McGeechan said.

"Ideally, there would be a third pro-team to give that extra base and a tighter but competitive Premiership, which is leading players into it."

Scottish Rugby closed the Border Reivers franchise in 2007, leaving Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh as the only two professional sides in Scotland.

"From a distance, I would say Glasgow and Edinburgh have become more competitive and more consistent than maybe they were four or five years ago, which is quite important," McGeechan told BBC Scotland's Sports Weekly programme.

"I still think it's a narrow base to be producing an international side, but that's a pure rugby argument and I know there's all the finances that you have to balance with it.

"Our young players have to be professional"

"That's a tough call, to keep producing a really competitive national side.

"I've been very impressed seeing some of the other teams in the Magners League.

"Munster now have got a tremendous programme and I think this development of the clubs playing in the British & Irish Cup is going to be important for the clubs because you're comparing notes player to player, coach to coach but also administrator to administrator, which I think has been missing for too long."

McGeechan, who coached the British & Irish Lions during the summer tour of South Africa, believes Scotland must have a strong professional game to give the national team the best possible chance of being successful.

"You need a system where you don't lose one single talented player who's in the system and that those players come through," he said.

"You look at a system that starts amateur and has to end up professional and if all the lines and all the arrows are pointing in the same way then that's the best service we can give to our young players.

"Our young players have to be professional, have that ambition to play for Scotland and have the best support system that allows that to happen.

"That needs everybody thinking that way and accepting that we'll go nowhere unless our professional game is in good shape."

After leaving his role as director of rugby at Wasps in May, McGeechan was linked with a post at London Scottish but has yet to make firm plans about his future.

"At the moment, I've got some decisions to make, probably by the New Year," he said. "I've got three or four different directions I could go - some with rugby, some linking with rugby but doing other things.

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"I'm enjoying a sabbatical at the moment. I've got to be clear and committed in my own mind to what I want to do because if it is staying in rugby, it becomes seven-days-a-week again and you've got to make sure you're right for that.

"I still like coaching. What I would like to do is try in some way to keep helping younger coaches come through because I think that's the most important thing now.

"It is important that there is a good strong new generation of coaches and, if I can help in that way wherever, I'd quite enjoy that."

Scotland play their first match under new coach Andy Robinson on Saturday against Fiji and McGeechan insists the team are in good hands.

"I think he's a good coach and I've always admired him and I know him pretty well as a person," McGeechan said.

"He's the sort of coach that the Scottish players will enjoy being coached by and he's fairly clear about what he wants."

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