GOING commando will take on a whole new meaning for Scotland's Rugby World Cup squad next week when they start their preparation for this autumn's tournament.

The 46 players selected by Vern Cotter will convene at Ravenscraig and for most of the two-month training period will be based at BT Murrayfield. But before they settle down to life at the national stadium they will head to the Pyrenees for a week, where they will engage in some military manoeuvres organised by Cotter himself.

The sessions with sections of the French army and navy will be demanding both physically and mentally, but they should also be entertaining, according to the head coach. It remains to be seen, of course, if the 53-year-old's idea of entertainment is at all close to what his players understand by the term: after all, there has long been a disparity between the generations on rugby tours, notably when, on a trip to New Zealand in 1996, Jim Telfer responded to his players' plea for light relief by taking them on a trip to some glow-worm caves.

Yet Cotter is convinced that the visit to Font Romeu will be instructive and enjoyable for the squad, and will serve as a helpful introduction to a long preparatory period that will largely consist of a lot of hard work in very familiar surroundings. "There's going to be a bit of everything," the coach said about the French camp. "We spend three or four days in the mountains and then a couple of days down at sea level.

"We have two sessions with the French commandos. We've got some fun stuff as well. So it'll be a mixture: time to get to know each other again, come together again, and then start thinking about where we want to end up after a seven/eight week period.

"The French [national] team used the land-based commandos. I got the idea off Julien Bonnaire, who was with the French team in 2007, and he said it was the best thing that they had done, with the land-based. And with Clermont we used the Navy Seal equivalents.

"They'll have fun. They will, I promise you.

"They'll have an evening with the land-based commandos, and then we have a day with the French equivalent of the Navy Seals. So there are two different sessions, aquatic and land-based."

The squad may just be thankful that no aerial activities are planned. The serious side of such adventures, of course, is that players are encouraged to be more resourceful and assertive - in other words, to become better leaders.

Cotter is sure he already has several very competent leaders in his squad, but he is less certain which one - if any - stands out above the rest to the extent of deserving to be named captain for the World Cup campaign. Greig Laidlaw was skipper during the Six Nations Championship, Grant Gilchrist was named captain for the autumn Tests but was injured before he could play in any of them, and others such as Jonny Gray and Josh Strauss are already acknowledged as senior figures.

Rather than plump for one of them, the coach floated the idea of naming two to share the responsibilities - although he believes it is too early for Strauss, who will only just be eligible on residence in time for the World Cup. "I think he'll have a leadership role within the team," Cotter said of the Glasgow back-row forward. "Initially, probably, that would be too much of a responsibility for him. We've got other captaincy [candidates], but he will have a leadership role within the group, as he does with Glasgow. But as an official captain it may be a bit much. I think probably in the future he could be, he may be in the future, but going straight into the World Cup it's a big ask.

"We might have a co-captaincy. There are various scenarios. There's either two in the team or one in the team or none in the team so, what we see as one of our challenges, the first two games have three days apart. So how do we best negotiate that and what is the best form of preparing and having the team prepared for those two games?

"Nothing's set. We haven't decided yet, but they could become options there."

Cotter has already planned for life beyond the World Cup by appointing his compatriot Jason O'Halloran as his assistant coach once the tournament ends. He will also use O'Halloran as a sounding board over the summer, just as he was himself consulted by the Scotland hierarchy while serving out his contract with Clermont. "Jason watched the [PRO12] final, he watched the semi-final, he's making notes.

"He's starting his campaign [with Manawatu in New Zealand] as from this week, so he'll be fully focused on that. But he cast his eye over the players, asking relevant questions to players and groups. He's getting to know a little bit of the player potential we have.

"It's not going to be a closed shop. I'll be looking to any form of advice that will help during the preparation period. I know he'll be busy as well, but there will be times when . . . If after one of our games I want to know an objective opinion, I may give him a call and ask him what he thinks."

As many of the players will have had only two weeks off before they meet up a week tomorrow, Cotter knows that the training camp cannot consist of full-on physicality day after day. "What we've done is put it into blocks of three weeks," he explained. "So we start with three weeks and then there's a week off, then another three-week block and then another week off. So we try and give them some balance with that type of preparation.

"We'll be managing them on an individual basis throughout the first few weeks, monitoring them, assessing them. We are aware that some of them may be tired, will be tired, but it's a World Cup year."