There must be easier tasks in life than trying to identify the highlights of a rugby year in which Scotland were kept off the bottom of the Six Nations table only by points difference, missed out on a place in the quarter-finals of the World Cup for the first time and failed to score a try in three of their four matches in the tournament.

Yet for all the woes of Andy Robinson's side, the mood throughout the sport at the close of 2011 was probably better and more optimistic than at any time in the past decade. This was the year in which the wider game asserted itself and reminded us that there is more to Scottish rugby than the national team.

And never was that point more powerfully put than in the speech delivered by Mike O'Reilly to the SRU's annual meeting last June. Ten months earlier, O'Reilly had quit his post as the Union's librarian, frustrated by the governing body's neglect of their own history and heritage. On his Murrayfield comeback, his address was a wither-ing critique of the bean-counting mentality that had directed the sport for the past few years.

O'Reilly's speech captured the Zeitgeist perfectly, coming as it did just a few days after Gordon McKie had stood down as chief executive. It was also delivered on the day Sir Moir Lockhead, founder and former chief executive of First Group, took over as SRU chairman.

O'Reilly's cri de coeur reflected a wider disquiet over what had been Scottish rugby's ruling orthodoxy for two decades. The idea that success would come from concent-rating resources on the national team at the expense of other parts of the game worked well on paper, and it was certainly a lucrative convenience for those on the Murrayfield payroll, but in practice it had been complete cobblers.

The merest twitch of one of Lockhead's eyebrows would tell you that he has little time for the sort of self-serving mumbo-jumbo that had become the norm in Scottish rugby's corridors of power. Hence the change in emphasis over the past six months.

Glasgow and Edinburgh have been given the resources and the autonomy they should have had years ago, and have responded superbly. The two teams are still in the mix for getting to the last eight of the Heineken Cup, and both are building sides that allow them to look into the future with optimism.Who would have predicted just a few months ago that Sean Lineen would end the year with David Lemi and Rory Lamont in his Glasgow side – and Sean Lamont on the way? Lineen might do well to balance all that backline flair with a frontal grunt but those arrivals speak well of the club's ambition.

Glasgow have the upper hand as far as the RaboDirect PRO12 is concerned, but Edinburgh look better placed in the Heineken Cup. If they can get the better of Racing Metro, the side they beat in that sensational 48-47 victory at Murrayfield last month, then their final home match against London Irish will be the making – or breaking – of their season.

And, perhaps, the Test prospects of a few players as well, for the Six Nations looms once more. The combination of a feeble World Cup performance and the emergence of a brat pack of players billed as Scotland's best crop of young talent for a generation means the opening match, against England at Murrayfield on Saturday, Feb- ruary 4, could provide the spring-board for a decent campaign and the foundations of the inter-national side for years to come.

Here, though, some caution is required. It would be hard to imagine that England, under caretaker coach Stuart Lancaster, could be as hopeless as they were at the World Cup, and it is still well to remember that between their episodes of drunkenness, debauchery and dwarf-throwing in New Zealand they also managed to beat Scotland.

Robinson is still seen as the best man for the coaching job, but a solitary win in each of his two Six Nations campaigns with Scotland is a record that needs rapid improvement. He can put the summer tour to Australia and the Pacific Islands down to experience, but an autumn series that includes New Zealand and South Africa is a daunting prospect. A tough, tough year lies ahead.