Nucifora capture is a shrewd move by the SRU

David Nucifora will play a crucial role for the Scottish Rugby Union both in the here and now and in terms of plotting how best to overhaul its failing development structures for the next decade.
Confirmation is expected from Murrayfield early this week that the Australian high-performance guru is joining on a consultancy basis for the next two years, a move revealed by our Sunday Times Ireland colleagues over the weekend.
We understand that Nucifora will effectively become interim performance director as the SRU continues to identify a permanent successor to Jim Mallinder. The departure of the former Northampton Saints director of rugby was announced last December, but his post remains unfilled, not least because of how specialist a job it is.
A recognised expert in this small field, one of Nucifora’s responsibilities will be to drive the search and, potentially, mentor whoever does eventually come in as they get to grips with a challenging landscape and considerable remit.
Up to now, John McGuigan, the SRU chairman, has been leading the recruitment process in parallel to working on a replacement for Mark Dodson as chief executive. That appointment is believed to be imminent — McGuigan having had to abruptly relaunch it last month when Mark Darbon, the erstwhile Northampton Saints chief executive, jilted the SRU at the altar in favour of taking charge at golf’s R&A.
As McGuigan himself noted at a post-Six Nations media briefing, the pool of credible candidates to become the performance director of a leading union is necessarily limited.
It is not like recruiting for a head coach of Scotland, or even one of the professional clubs, where many more individuals will possess the right skillset and track record to deliver in roles that may bring greater profile, but have significantly less in the way of breadth and depth of responsibility across the game.
Viewed in this light, Nucifora represents an imaginative and certainly eye-catching solution to the conundrum, even if only on a temporary basis. It also chimes with McGuigan’s stated intention for Murrayfield to show ambition when it comes to its most strategically important positions.
Plugged into the requirements, peculiarities and politics of northern hemisphere rugby from his decade with the IRFU, Nucifora can point to a CV which shows rich success in a number of the areas where Scottish rugby finds itself so lacking.
While any reading of Nucifora’s time in Ireland should not underestimate the role played by Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell in establishing Leinster and the men’s national team to their now familiar positions, it is hard to argue with the core facts of four Six Nations titles — including two grand slams — two under-20 clean sweeps in the past five years and both the men’s and women’s sevens teams having qualified for the recent Olympic Games in Paris.
It is not, of course, simply a case of assuming that what worked in Ireland can and will have the same effect over here, but the Scottish game is crying out for a rugby figure of real heft and vision who can both set out and deliver a coherent strategy from top to bottom. It also needs someone who can align those various strands, layers and sometimes competing interests in a way where the small size of the Scottish scene becomes a virtue rather than the impediment it is often assumed to be.
Clear, nimble thinking articulated in such a fashion that everyone knows the direction of travel — and, crucially, their role within in — would represent a massive and positive step change from the approach of those who have previously sat in the performance director seat.
In Mallinder’s case, many of those notionally under his command reported rarely even seeing him never mind understanding how or why they might better fit into the bigger picture. Mallinder also never managed to carve out a defined space for himself between the twin pillars of Dodson and Gregor Townsend.
The SRU will expand on how Nucifora plans to balance his Scottish commitments with an existing consultancy role with the Australian union, but with Peter Horne (not that one) in situ as the director of performance rugby Down Under, it must be assumed that Nucifora’s commitment will not be significant in terms of either time or scope.
Furthermore, it will do the SRU no harm to have a direct link into the machinations of the southern hemisphere game at a time when a large number of rugby’s core challenges require global solutions in addition to local nous.
Accustomed to the fudges of the previous Murrayfield regime, some will inevitably view Nucifora’s involvement with suspicion, a halfway house that cannot deliver the root-and-branch change that is so patently required. But the reality is that, in the world in which the former Wallabies hooker resides, there are few bigger or more well-regarded fish.
Landing him, even for a limited period, is a coup — one which ought to pay dividends for much longer than he is actually there. The move can be read as both a statement of intent and a message to the Scottish rugby community that genuine change is afoot.