Scottish Rugby chief executive Alex Williamson is keen for Glasgow Warriors head coach Franco Smith to remain in his position at the United Rugby Championship (URC) outfit.

There has been plenty of speculation about Smith’s future and he is viewed as one of the favourites to become Wales’ head coach on a permanent basis after the Welsh Rugby Union parted ways’ with former boss Warren Gatland during this year’s Six Nations.

Keen for Smith and Sean Everitt to stay on

But Williamson is keen for Smith and fellow South African Sean Everitt, who is the head coach at Edinburgh, to remain in their positions at the URC‘s two Scottish clubs.

“We also really think Franco and Sean will continue to develop the quality of our player groups through the clubs,” he told Scotland Rugby News.

Regarding Smith being linked with Wales’ vacant head coaching position, he said: “We absolutely want him in.”

Smith said recently he needs “to reflect a little bit” after his budget as Glasgow Warriors boss was reduced, while he has also lost the services of some of the players born outside of Scotland in his squad due to a Scottish Rugby directive to have fewer foreigners in the country’s professional club squads.

And Williamson said he understood how frustrating it must be for Smith to lose some of those key players.

“You want your coaches to be loaded and charged and emotional and frustrated, particularly in moments like those, but I don’t actually think there is a huge gap between what Franco wants and what we’re talking about,” he added.

Franco Smith opens up on his future after end of Glasgow Warriors’ reign as URC champions

“The challenge is probably that the structures aren’t bedded in and as a consequence we’ve not really had the opportunity to test and stress test the thinking.

“We all believe that there is a place for foreign players, they just have to be the right ones in the right moments.”

Backing Scotland’s teams to be competitive despite smaller squads

Despite Scotland’s professional teams having smaller squads from next season, Williamson believes they will still be competitive.

“I would be less confident if we weren’t making a change to the pathway,” he added.

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to intensify the investment in a slightly smaller group of players who propel more quickly and there is a question absolutely as to whether that has a short-term impact on performance.

“When you really look at the number of high-quality young players that are sitting in and around both those squads, I think that we should feel confident that whilst they may need some sort of blooding into first team rugby, we’ve got a ton of quality.

“We’re essentially saying if there’s a Scottish player who’s good enough they’ll play and I think we need to encourage that because if we don’t do that, I don’t see how we can propagate enough players into the senior first 15 to make us more competitive than we currently are.”

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