The national team has won just two of its past 10 games.

The process of appointing a new coach has been a PR disaster that bordered on farce. The country's representation in Europe's most prestigious competition is in danger of being halved. Playing options are so limited that the Test team recently featured a replacement who had not started a professional game.

All things considered, it should stretch Mark Dodson's powers of creativity to turn his chief executive's speech to the Scottish Rubgy Union's annual meeting on Saturday into the kind of triumphal address that he would probably like to deliver. But when he sat down in South Africa to discuss the state of the Scottish rugby nation, it was pretty clear that the man with his hand on the Murrayfield tiller has no intention of regaling the delegates with a litany of doom and gloom.

Dodson's top line will be drawn for the bottom line – in other words he will report a modest but satisfying improvement in the Union's financial position over the past year, turning in a decent profit and reducing the historic burden of debt as well. He can also confirm that Scotland had a better Six Nations than in any year since 2006 and that Glasgow came within a whisker of winning a place in the RaboDirect PRO12 final. And yet, there are issues. None bigger, in many eyes, than the fact that the affairs of the national side are now being overseen by a head coach whose career prospects will not be damaged one bit by the extension of a run of defeats in which that side has lost its past four games. Come hell, high water or an autumn whitewash, Scott Johnson will be the country's director of rugby next year.

And Dodson is happy with that. Happy enough to suggest he would forgive Johnson a run of wretched results if he can hand on a pool of Test-hardened players to Vern Cotter when the head-coach-in-waiting finally detaches himself from his duties at Clermont Auvergne.

"We said when we came out here that this tour was about developing a rich and deeper squad and blooding people to see if they can deal with international rugby," was Dodson's bullish opening line. "And that is what we are going to do."

Thus far, the blooding process has created nine new international players over the course of two games. Early days yet, but at least three of that number have probably cemented themselves into the berths they occupied as first-choice starters for future games.

Dodson said: "We are using this period to build a deeper and richer squad, and to blood as many players as possible for Test rugby, so that by the time Vern gets here he has a squad to take forward in the pre-World Cup period. This tour, in particular, has all the ingredients of that. What we are looking at here is that this tournament and the Autumn Tests will be used to try and develop the squad to go out and win the Six Nations.

"We have to think of this as a longer game. If we look at short term fixes we are not going to make the progress we want to make."

So much for international matters. What of that 800lb gorilla called the Heineken Cup accord that has been glowering in the corner of Dodson's Murrayfield office these past nine months? The umbrella organisations for clubs in England and France have been sabre-rattling for the past year, demanding a new agreement that would give them a bigger share of a pie into which, they argue, they pour most of the ingredients.

In essence, their complaints centre on representation and remuneration. To distill it further, they would like more of both. Dodson was bullishly protective of a status quo that gives Scotland two guaranteed places in the tournament when he spoke on the matter late last year, but there has been a clear softening of his position in the months since.

There is a labyrinthine complexity to the range of scenarios that could unfold as the future of European club rugby is hammered out. The French sides want a Heineken Cup with 20 participating teams rather than the current 24, with the second-tier Amlin Cup contested by 20 sides rather than 16. Positions are being taken and postures struck, but the line that Dodson drew in the sand last year has been quietly erased.

"We are going to fight tooth and nail to keep two in," but his subsequent remarks suggested that the teeth and the nails are not as sharp as once they were. The English have already played their trump card of threatening to pull out, and in order to keep them – and the money they attract – in the tournament some compromises will have to be made.

Dodson is in no hurry to put his cards on the table, but he acknowledges that a scenario in which one Heineken Cup place is guaranteed by right and another is earned by way of RaboDirect PRO12 standings may be the way forward. In which case, the battle become one of trying to hang on to the revenues that come to Murrayfield.

It is a battle worth fighting. Something in the region of £2m is at stake. It is not the kind of money Dodson is inclined to give away.

"If they want to go for a competitive sporting format change they have to give us something back for that," he said. "In many ways I am not frightened of the [Scottish sides'] ability to qualify. We shouldn't be. If we have two decent teams then we should always have the ability to qualify."

Dodson has also made it clear that in light of a lack of spare funds, and with no queue of benefactors beating a path to Murrayfield, there is no immediate prospect of a third pro team being revived in Scotland.

The financial argument against such a side is compelling, but the lack of opportunities available to Scottish players is alarming, the gravity of the situation highlighted by the fact that Glasgow's Fraser Brown, with just 44 minutes of pro rugby under his belt, was Scotland's replacement hooker against South Africa on Saturday.

Moves are afoot to reconfigure the SRU Academy – an almost annual event it seems – but the most startling of all Dodson's statements was his admission that he would be happy to see more Scottish players moving out of the country to open up opportunities for others. Given that Scotland's original implementation of professionalism – around 15 years ago – was designed to keep players at home, it is a staggering shift of position.

"I'd love to be the factory of the world," he said. "I'd love to be in a situation where we have enough to fill our two pro teams and we're sending good players all over the world." Of course, delegates at Saturday's agm might take a different view, and wonder how it came to be that Scotland should want to become the Fiji of the northern hemisphere.

Dodson also suggested the appointment of a new coach at Edinburgh – which he expects will happen in the next few weeks – will be only the start of a root-and-branch revamp for at the club.

"Edinburgh is going to be reconstructed' he said. "We had a European cup semi-final [in 2012] that probably masked some of the structural problems underneath the Edinburgh business. There is a soft core at the centre of Edinburgh; there is not a team ethic and they don't seem to be able to create a level of competitiveness."