Scotland captain Rachel Malcolm is looking forward to working with new forwards coach Fraser Brown.
The ex-Scotland hooker retired at the end of last year having played more than 150 games for Glasgow Warriors. He also won 61 caps for Scotland in a 10-year international career.
He joined the Scotland set-up on a consultancy basis as they build up to the WXV 2 competition – which they won last year - in South Africa next month.
While it is early in Brown’s time with the squad, Malcolm said she has been impressed.
She said: “Fraser is immensely experienced as a player and we're super fortunate to have him at this point.
“He's just off the back of playing at a very high level in the men's game to then come into our programme to coach us.
“He is learning how to deal with very loud and obnoxious (sometimes) women so he is transitioning into that role but I think he's done really well.
“One thing I always pick up on with new coaches coming in is whether they know everyone's name, and from day one, he did.
“That is really important to show he respects us and he's put the time in away from here and came in with a huge amount of knowledge about where we're at.”
She believes the former Glasgow hooker will add to their forward pack.
“He's definitely going to challenge us on things which is what we need to improve,” she added.
The 33-year-old Loughborough Lightning flanker also said the squad are not looking at short-term goals, like retaining the WXV 2 title, and would rather focus on building into the World Cup next year.
She added: “I don’t think we can really look at the season in terms of short-term goals
“Ultimately, we are looking ahead to qualifying for the World Cup and then performing at that World Cup, and everything up to that point has to be part of that journey.”
“If we get too bogged down about WXV, then we might miss out on picking up some of the younger girls coming through and giving them opportunities, who might then go on to shine at the World Cup.
“We have to look at this programme as a 14-month journey, We’ve talked to the group around what is our ultimate goal, and it is in 14 months’ time, so we need to do everything we can to get the processes right.”
Scotland begin their season against Wales and Fiji at Hive Stadium next month, and Malcolm believes those matches could be useful for head coach Bryan Easson ahead of a long season.
The skipper continued: "We want to get more players coming through, more depth across positions, ultimately hopefully as much exposure to Test rugby as we can. Wales and Fiji coming up is a brilliant example of that, then there’s WXV and that’s five games within a very short period of time, which we never used to have.
“So making the most of those opportunities and making sure players get opportunities within that, and then just keep building.
“We’ve got a lot of areas we can still improve on, and I think that’s a really exciting place to be in as a team.”
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