Ross Jack faces a gargantuan task as the first national high performance football coach for the Scottish Institute of Sport. And with Scotland having failed to qualify for this summer’s World Cup finals, there is no shortage of critics queueing up to tell the game’s decision-makers where the sport has gone wrong in recent years.

Mr Jack comes to the post having worked for the Scottish Football Association as a football development officer in the north of Scotland. He previously played professionally with Dundee, Dunfermline and Kilmarnock among other clubs. Now he has been given one of the cornerstone positions for ensuring Scotland’s future wellbeing on the international stage.

Whereas Scotland once had an assembly-line for producing talent such as Jim Baxter, Denis Law and Kenny Dalglish, there is not the same rich list for Scottish coaches to pluck from, a fact acknowledged by Craig Brown when he stood down as national team manager. Mr Jack will be looking at players of secondary school age and be relying on a network of contacts at various sports bodies to help him identify talent.

It is essential to Mr Jack’s work that he liaises closely with the SFA, the Scottish Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Schools’ Football Association and forges partnerships with the leading football clubs.

Clubs have their own system of talent identification and nurturing players and many realise that the only way to ensure their own future wellbeing is to invest in home-grown talent. Rangers have recently opened a youth academy and purpose-built training facility at Murray Park in Glasgow. Hearts expect to start work on a youth academy at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh next year. Celtic have, so far, been hesitant in putting together a youth academy but Aberdeen have a thriving youth set-up and the rewards are starting to show on the field of play.

Mr Jack is looking to assemble a “manageable number” of under-18 players. It is thought his initial squad will have around 20. It will take a few months to assess and recruit individuals that he believes have the potential to play at full international level for Scotland in the future.

The players will remain with their professional clubs but will meet every five or six weeks as a group. Mr Jack will also visit players at their clubs for one-to-one coaching and to assess their development. And there will be scientific aids at the Scottish Institute of Sport which will measure how an individual is progressing. In time, he intends to have them play a few low-key challenge matches with other squads at home and abroad.

Mr Jack will leave the worrying about Scotland’s short-term future in football to others as he is more concerned with producing players who will play for their country in the next decade. He knows it will be a mammoth job pulling all the strands together but has been pleased with the support so far from professional clubs.

Sports institutes in Australia and France will provide the models for Mr Jack to use as he starts out but he will use his own experience to judge which aspects best suit a Scottish set-up.

“We are still some way behind in terms of facilities in Scotland but we are catching up,” he says. “What we have to ensure is that we have the correct support mechanisms in place which can complement what is being done in the clubs.

“We will look at every aspect of the individual and meet with his club coaches and parents to decide whether he is suitable for the institute. Individuals and their parents must be aware of the sacrifices that have to be made to be a full international player.”

The coach recalls: “I was pretty fortunate in that when I started out as a professional at Everton, the club was ahead of its time and looked after their young players. The club not only dealt with the football side of things but also the wellbeing of the young player.”

The selected players will initially be given 12-month contracts and will have to meet certain targets. “But after 12 months, even if they are not offered an extension, we will continue to monitor their development as we are aware that different people develop at different rates,” says Mr Jack.

“We will look at individuals as a whole; how they are developing as people as much as footballers. They will be given support in every aspect we can, including physiology, diet, medicine, education and psychology, and it will be a scientific approach.”

Mr Jack knows that this is a new approach for the Scottish game and realises that there may be some resistance from various parties. However, he does not lack ambition and feels privileged to be given the task to put the foundation stones in place for the sports institute.

“The ideal goal would be for Scotland to qualify for the World Cup finals in 2010 and for six or seven of the starting 11 to have come through the ranks of the institute,” he says.