In sport there are inevitably winners and losers, on and off the field of play.

And in revealing how it will divide up its investment into Scottish sport over the next three years, Sportscotland have given some the green light to think big while others count the cost of bringing up red flags.

Boxing and netball have emerged with favoured status as a pie with £45.2 million was divided up among 19 different sports, earning heavy increases in their investment with one eye on success at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on Australia's Gold Coast, with snowsports similarly enhanced ahead of that year's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

While swimming remains the largest net recipient with a total of £5,012,000 between now and 2019, well ahead of athletics and cycling, the golden contributions of Charlie Flynn and Josh Taylor at Glasgow 2014 have helped boxing to gain a huge 44 per cent increase in its backing which is also expected to enhance hopes of an enlarged contingent of Caledonian pugilists at next summer's Olympic Games in Rio.

Yet as The Herald revealed last month, there is to be a shift in emphasis towards recognising the wider benefits of team sports and although rugby union has lost almost a fifth of its investment, netball has been handed a huge vote of confidence despite Scotland's current inability to trouble the leading nations.

"(2015) is the first time netball have qualified for the world championships for a while so there's a momentum behind it," said Sportscotland chief executive Stewart Harris. "We'll look to see how they get on but when you balance the growth with their performance, we see an opportunity.

"We have to set challenges. Performance sport is an expensive business and we're setting tough parameters, especially in team sports where the participation numbers are quite small. But to give us a chance of doing well, we have to set targets and netball are on that journey now and we'll see how we get on.

"What we look at is how the sports have progressed in the last cycles and what the prospects are going forward. We've seen growth in people being interested in the sport, particularly in netball. They're up 58% in membership and they think they can double it. Boxing is saying they can get six medals next time which would be great."

Table tennis, wrestling and weightlifting paid the price for under-achievement, with the latter ceding 63 per cent of its allocation over the previous four years. "We take a step back because there are other areas we can work on to help them rebuild because it's pointless putting in resources when they're not set up to deliver," Harris adds. While the overall budget is up seven per cent, it has not come without an internal evaluation that also examines the monies injected into UK Sport's high performance system as well as via the Stirling-based Institute of Sport. "We gave every sport a chance in Glasgow. But now it's back to hard decisions."

Which is why medal potential is no longer the lone bell weather, breaking away from UK Sport's obsessive chase for hopes and glory. The new mantra is more holistic, citing the five key principals of "a system approach, sustainability, high standards, impact, and additionality." In layman's terms, it demands not only that talent is brought through and nurtured but that the taxpaying public-at-large can also reap the spin-offs.

Harris will urge a shift in the commentary that school sport, gym use and the often-thankless work done within community clubs are all severable strands in the nation's well-being strategy. It should not be one or other, he declared. "We'd like to look at the potential to grow team sports. And that may help the performance. It seems anomalous when you look at big team sports like basketball and we haven't cracked it yet in participation terms or performance. It would be really interesting to make some inroads there."

As a former international basketball coach, it is no coincidence that his own sport springs to Harris' mind. While judo, which is not in the Gold Coast 2018 programme, has retained its funding, basketball - which is channelled primarily through a GB set-up - has been left outside this ring-fenced group until the home nations' qualification path is established. "Once that becomes clear, we'll then be able to consider what we can give to them to give them every chance to qualify," he confirmed.