After a decade in charge, Ian Rankin knew it was time for change at Dundee HSFP long before the disappointment of losing their final league match and then Premier One play-off match by a combined total of three points to be relegated from the top flight.

"It was a sore way to finish," he says ruefully. "However, I have no doubt the boys will bounce back quickly under Colin Robertson, our new head coach. It is an excellent club."

A very different challenge may await the former Caledonia Reds and Edinburgh head coach, though, should he be successful in his bid to enter what many consider to be the murky world of Scottish rugby politics by standing to become vice-president of the Scottish Rugby Union. He stands this month as a relative novice in these areas against Archie Ferguson, a long-time member of the SRU Council and various international boards, and similarly long-standing SRU board member Jock Millican, like Rankin a flanker in his playing days who was capped just before the latter entered the senior club game.

It is a development that would not have been the most obvious choice for a man who has always looked more comfortable in a tracksuit since his days as a rumbustious flanker with Howe of Fife and the North & Midlands in the 1980s. Rankin was a fine player but notes that any aspirations he had to play beyond district level were thwarted by factors largely outwith his control, namely the presence of David Leslie, Iain Paxton, the Calder twins, Derek White, John Beattie and John Jeffrey to name but seven during his own heyday.

Like many who lived through that glorious era, he longs to see Scotland competing for grand slam successes rather than celebrating rare individual victories in major tournaments, which goes some way to explaining why those who approached him to stand for the vice-presidency received a hearing.

However, having also coached Scotland A during his time on the SRU books, as well as managing the Scottish Club XV in more recent years, he knows that is not merely a matter for Scott Johnson and Vern Cotter but for the entire Scottish rugby community and believes some fundamental changes are required in the way the game is being run.

"Openness and transparency is something we keep hearing about but there are a lot of things that happen and nobody knows how it happened," he observed. "It's not a matter of always agreeing with it, as long as you know how it's happened, who's made the decisions and who's responsible, what was the rationale and why it happened. Sometimes you're left wondering where did that come from?

"The size of our country is maybe a weakness but it should be a strength as well. Compromise at times should be seen as a strength not a weakness. You can see that people don't want to give a wee bit because they think it will be seen as a weakness. There are times you need to deviate slightly from where you started."

His canvassing has confirmed the impression that Murrayfield has become detached from the wider game. "The worry of a lot of people in clubs is that the core of the game is now demonstrated by the size of the marketing, the media, all these departments and the actual rugby part seems to be pretty small," Rankin pointed out.

"Knowing who you can speak to in the club game is difficult enough so when you get to the next level I suppose Scott Johnson is the guy they all answer to now, but who is the person who will actually know people in Scotland, where to go and who to ask. That's been the case for a wee while. You don't gain that knowledge overnight. It doesn't matter if it was Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, you've got to find people you can trust who are telling you the right things because you have to do that before you can find things out for yourself."

Rankin knows there will be those who feel he is not properly qualified for such an administrative role, not having put in his time on the SRU's Council or Board as his rivals have done. Furthermore there is a view that vice president, then president, are essentially ceremonial, but getting to sit beside Princess Anne while glad-handing with rugby's great and good are not Rankin's motivation.

"Having a voice slightly further up the pecking order for the clubs is the reason I am standing," he said. "Many people have said they see it as an ambassadorial role. I definitely don't see it that way. I am sure it is part of it but for me it is about having influence at the top table on behalf of the clubs.

"The key driver during Gordon McKie's time [as chief executive, which ended in 2011] was quite unashamedly to bring the overdraft down. They've done that and they've managed to cut it back but in many ways the club game was left to its own devices and that's been a problem. There's no factory that just produces the next international players. They can be coming from so many different places, but if we can't give them the right facilities then how do they develop?"

So says a man who has been at rugby's front-line at both professional and amateur level for the best part of the last 40 years. However, as the sport's establishment absorbs his words and their implications he may be about to discover that the arena he is now entering is, in its way, the most bruising of all.