As it was finally confirmed that Dave Rennie had extended his contract until the summer of 2020, Glasgow Warriors’ head coach insisted that the timing was down to personal reasons and had nothing to do with making himself available to take charge of Australia next year.

Rennie first revealed that he had agreed a new deal at the turn of the year, but since then there had been reports in the Australian media claiming he had been lined up for that head coach post at the Wallabies which Michael Cheika is vacating at the end of the World Cup.

More than three months later there has clearly been time to negotiate a further extension of the sort Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill has signed until 2021, which could have helped clarify Rennie’s situation.

He consequently accepted that it was natural that the timings involved will only fuel speculation, but claimed that while he is interested in staying on, he had family considerations to accommodate, while suggesting that the real issue is the timing of an announcement that could have been made some time ago.

“There is still plenty of time, still 15 months or so until that contract is up, plenty of time to make a decision on where we will be based after that,” he said.

“We never sat around and talked about a multi-year deal or nd extension. I was happy to extend for 12 months based on where we were at – this was quite a long time ago – and could extend beyond that.

“The biggest challenge for us being over this way is being away from grandkids and kids and so on. We committed for one year and then will be in a position where we will make a decision whether we need to head closer to home or whether we are prepared to stay here longer.”

Edinburgh have meanwhile confirmed that Ross Ford, Scotland’s most capped player will leave them at the end of the season, along with London Irish-bound Allan Dell, two more Scotland internationals, Tom Brown and Luke Hamilton and scrum-halves Sean Kennedy and Nathan Fowles.