'All-powerful Nucifora gives glimpse of uncompromising character'

It was towards the end of his press conference on Tuesday when David Nucifora gave us a real glimpse of the kind of uncompromising character Scottish Rugby has turned to as its all-powerful performance director.

"I try to be engaging with people," said the Australian, who spent 10 hugely successful years in Ireland from 2014.

"If you want to work in this business, once you've worked out where you want to get to and how you're going to get there, you've got to be fairly bullish because there's lots of distractions, there's lots of things that will happen that will potentially knock you off track if you let it."

Nucifora went on to talk about the importance of single-mindedness. "If you don't have that, you can call it uncompromising, you can call it what you like, but this is a difficult business.

"I'll certainly be searching for people that are up for the challenge, that are adaptable, agile, all the things you need to be if you're going to work in high performance; people that are excited about trying to achieve something because if you're not, you're in the wrong business."

If that gives the impression of a guy who knows what he needs to do and knows how to do it, then good, because that's the way he came across.

Talk is cheap, of course, but not when you can back it up. And Nucifora can certainly do that.

In his decade as IRFU performance director, two Grand Slams and three Under-20 Grand Slams were won. Ireland hit world number one. They beat the All Blacks for the first time, won a series in New Zealand for the first time, made a Junior World Cup final and saw the previously non-existent men's and women's Sevens teams make giant improvements, both reaching the Olympics.

Throughout all that, Nucifora gave the impression that giving briefings to the media was about as high on his to-do list as taking a kicking from Paul O'Connell.

So when he spoke impressively on Tuesday it was tempting to look on it as, in fact, two press conferences - his first and possibly his last.

The Australian is here for two years but such is his way of doing things, there's no guarantee we'll hear from him again. His admirers in Ireland will tell you he's driven, focused and ruthless in the execution of his plan. His forcefulness caused friction, but a battle never bothered him.

"I really didn't have much intention when I finished in Ireland to take something else on," he said on Tuesday, adding: "But I was convinced there was opportunity here to do something.

"I suppose the temptation of being able to help reshape something I believe has a very high ceiling was attractive to me.

"I don't see it as being something that's going to materialise overnight. I certainly don't have a magic wand, but I do see that the structures and the raw material is here to work with. I look at it in a very positive light that we can achieve some really good things."

Nucifora will rework Scotland's failing player pathway in the first instance. "You've got to have a system underneath you that allows that sustainable success you're chasing. It's no good just having bursts of success and then dropping off.

"You have to be creative to find ways to create competition. Because if you don't do that, unfortunately, there's a terrible habit in human nature to become comfortable. So we need to find a way to create that competition, and that's best done by driving people from beneath and getting them ready to compete at the highest levels of the game."

This is going to be an interesting journey. Nucifora will not base himself in Scotland permanently, but he'll appear for chunks of time throughout the year. A human whirlwind, blowing in and out like a force of nature.