After steering the national team through its most successful ever era Yvette Yun Luo has decided to step down from her position as head coach at BadmintonScotland.

The former Chinese internationalist has been in Scotland since 2009 and steered Scotland to a best ever finish at the Sudirman Cup two years ago ahead of last year's Commonwealth Games where, tasked with winning one medal to match its funding target, the team claimed two, Kirsty Gilmour's silver in women's singles and a bronze for Imogen Bankier and Robert Blair in mixed doubles.

Since Yun Luo's arrival, nine separate Scotland players have won international titles while in 2011 Bankier, in partnership with England's Chris Adcock, won a mixed doubles silver medal at the World Championships in Wembley and Gilmour won a women's singles bronze medal at that year's Commonwealth Youth Games the same year, launching her rise to prominence.

Bankier also earned bronze medals at the European Championships in 2012, with Adcock and in 2014 in women's doubles with Bulgaria's Petya Nedelcheva, in between times helping Scotland form half the British badminton team at the Olympics in London, along with singles representative Susan Egelstaff.

In team events Scotland have meanwhile achieved new levels of consistency in the international arena, reaching quarter-finals at the European Championships in 2013 and 2015, beating defending champions Germany on the way to the last eight in February and most impressively of all Scotland topping Group Two at the 2013 Sudirman Cup with an unbeaten performance against higher ranked opposition in their group and in the positional play-off.

As the decision was announced yesterday Yun Luo's reflections consequently touched upon the hard edge she has introduced as a product of world badminton's dominant and most rigorous development system.

""Looking back over the last five years, I am proud of the two positive influences I have had," she said.

"One is the increased work ethic of the squad members as reflected by the healthy training atmosphere in training at Scotstoun and the other is the way my badminton knowledge has influenced the support we receive from the Scottish Institute of Sport.

"All in all, I have enjoyed working with the players in a challenging way over the last five years."

Her contribution drew a warm tribute from Anne Smillie who said: "Obviously, we will be sorry to see Yvette leave us. She has been the best and most successful coach Scotland has ever had.

"She will be a hard act to follow and she will leave us in June with a heartfelt thank you. We wish her every success wherever the future takes her."

However Smillie's focus now shifts to identifying a coach who can at least match and ideally build upon Yun Luo's efforts.

"The search begins now to find a worthy successor, someone with the same qualities and ability to motivate our current and emerging talent as we enter an exciting new four-year cycle," said the CEO.

"Yvette recognises the time is right to move on and give her successor chance to develop a strong squad for the 2017 Sudirman Cup on Australia's Gold Coast and, especially, for the 2017 World Championships in Glasgow. On top of that the year-long Olympic qualifying race for Rio begins in May."

That is a key consideration for, in particular, Gilmour, the only Scot who currently looks a strong contender to make the British team for the Olympics.

The Lanarkshire native worked particularly closely with Yun Luo in justifying her decision to pull out of the Milton Keynes-based official GB programme and work in Glasgow ahead of winning her Commonwealth Games silver medal last year and achieving an all-time Scottish high of 16th in the world rankings.

Her form and ranking have, however, slipped this season and the time may well be right for new thinking to be injected.

Changes in staff within the GB programme since both she and Imogen Bankier, the doubles specialist who is Scotland's most successful women's badminton player of all time, have also offered hope that a more flexible approach from Milton Keynes would allow Gilmour, by far the UK's leading women's singles player, to return to being centrally supported while doing the vast majority of her practise and training at Scotstoun.

That will, however, now depend upon the right appointment being made in order to provide confidence that she will be properly supported in preparing for the Olympics.