THE PRESSURE on Scots who play for clubs outside the country has been ratcheted up another level, with Frank Hadden, the national team's coach, starkly spelling out that anybody who leaves Scotland is putting their international careers in jeopardy.

The arrival of his new assistants, Mike Brewer as forwards coach and Graham Steadman in charge of the defence, has moved the goalposts yet again in favour of the home-based players.

Of the 50 Scots invited to train at Murrayfield tomorrow, in a session designed to debrief the summer tour and start preparations for facing New Zealand and South Africa in November, 18 are based outside Scotland. All of them will be told that the bar in favour of players from Edinburgh and Glasgow has been raised again.

Hadden has already shown a preference for players whose daily progress is easy for him to track. Recently, he has added that those playing for clubs that refuse to play ball with his demand for a fortnight's preparation time before the Autumn Tests and the Six Nations are risking their international places. Now there is yet another hurdle.

Brewer and Steadman are both spending training time with the Scottish clubs, working on skills, technique and styles with individual players. The one-to-one work they are doing as extra helpers at the club sessions should help both Edinburgh and Glasgow, but the main point is to make sure that when the players step up to Scotland squads, they are already familiar with the coaching demands. The two weeks before the internationals can then be turned into time to fine-tune tactics, not work on basic technique.

The exiles won't get that individual coaching, and so will arrive at international camps already at a disadvantage.

"I'm not saying we will always not select them," explains Hadden. "But if we have a choice between a home-based guy and an exile and he is already familiar with Mike (Brewer) and Graham (Steadman) then it makes sense to go down that route. The exile players are well aware of the situation.

"Both Brewer and Steadman have both been surprised by the relationship with the professional clubs. It is something I have worked hard at because we need to shortcut the whole process of preparing for international matches."

The dilemma of an exile has never been easy, particularly in Scotland where the fall-out from closing the Borders last year and the subsequent quarrel with the company that then owned Edinburgh meant many of them had no real choice about heading to other countries if they wanted to keep playing professional rugby.

Hadden has told their coaches that he wants all his squad tomorrow, possibly for future sessions and certainly for two weeks before he sends the team out to play New Zealand at Murrayfield in November and the players could pay with their places if they are prevented from attending.

"My philosophy in selection has changed because of what I saw happening in Argentina," explains Hadden. "We did not necessarily have our best players available but because we got two weeks preparation, we were able to perform better than we did in the Six Nations. What I said to the coaches and all the exile players is that there might be some fall-out. If we can't get access, then maybe we won't select them."

Certainly both Brewer and Steadman have been talking confidently about their ability to get the best out of Scottish players and both say they see the extra opportunities to work with them in a club setting as a novel but vital extra weapon in giving Scotland an edge over other countries.

The other task for all three, Hadden acknowledges, is to make sure that when the time comes to replace them, there are Scottish coaches in the frame.

"It is vital we make the whole thing as Scottish as we can," he said. "In our fitness and medical setup we have fantastic succession planning, but it is not so easy for coaches.

"We need to make that happen at professional level, we would like to create more opportunities for young coaches but we are limited by the number of teams. We could introduce more coaches into the structure, perhaps have more expertise in the age-group setup, and now that there are more professional back-up games that gives us another opportunity."