Mark Dodson, the Scottish Rugby chief executive, has admitted that the country is 15 years behind other top nations when it comes to putting the correct structures in place to develop the best young talent.

As he announced the base for the third of four new BT Sport Scottish Rugby academies - Napier University's Sighthill Campus in Edinburgh - yesterday, Dodson stated that the governing body is determined to see more home-grown players reach the top end of the game.

"We have been playing catch up [on other nations]," Dodson said.

"In the past, we never had primacy of use of facilities, but the great thing about the BT Sport academies is that we have now set these up as real development clinics for the next generation of players.

"There are also all the other things around our players now. It is not just the biomechanics and the sports science, but the strength and conditioning and the training and coaching is much deeper and more robust."

Dodson also stated that he hoped to see the Scottish professional teams filled with home-grown players within five years as the work of these new academies bears fruit.

"Our view is that we have to employ foreign players at the moment to make sure our pro teams are competitive. Over time, we have not supplied enough players of sufficient quality in sufficient numbers regularly enough for us not to be reliant on foreign talent.

"My view is that the new academy structure we are putting in place will allow us to have Scottish players right the way through our pro teams in depth, with maybe one or two superstar players from outside the country added that can make a difference."

As mentioned, the Edinburgh-based academy is the third of its kind to be launched - following Caledonia and Glasgow and the West - with the Borders location to be announced soon.

Within the academy structure there are likely to be 90 youngsters involved in total, made up of boys and girls aged 14 and upwards.

The Edinburgh Academy will be run by Graeme Beveridge, the former Scotland scrum-half.

He said: "This facility will allow us to develop a robust programme which will give players the best opportunities to improve and progress at this early stage in their rugby careers."

Meanwhile, from next season the top academy prospects - formerly called elite development players (EDPs) and now known as stage three academy players - will be contracted to 25 hours a week rather than 40 which is currently the case.

This is to allow the players to use the rest of their week to carry out studies or vocational work with help from Scottish Rugby.

Stephen Gemmell, Scottish Rugby's head of academy and performance programmes, explained: "We need to be flexible and work with other establishments to help the stage three players to be able to do something outwith their rugby.

"We have identified the number of hours that an academy player needs to be involved with us for and we have created a contract situation that supports that.

"We hope that they will all progress, but not everybody is going to become professional players, so there is a responsibility as a governing body to make sure that they have other skills as they come through their academy journey."

When the new academy system gets fully up and running next month, the top players from the Glasgow and the West Academy and the Caledonia Academy will feed into Glasgow Warriors with those from the Edinburgh Academy and the Borders Academy linked-up with Edinburgh.