Frank Hadden has insisted he is optimistic about his non-Scotland-based players being made available to the national team when he needs them during the build-up to the 2008 RBS 6 Nations.
With more of Scotland's top players than ever before now playing their club rugby in England, France, Ireland or Wales, the national team's head coach is aware that a good working relationship with the clubs in those countries is going to be vital this season - and he believes that the early signs have been promising.
Twenty of the 44 players invited to Monday's training day at Murrayfield are now based outside Scotland, and all but two of them were able to make it up to Edinburgh.
Northampton-based Sean Lamont is undergoing an operation on his knee tomorrow and was told not to fly in case the joint became inflamed, while Marcus Di Rollo decided that his time would be better spent in France as he tries to force his way into the starting team at Toulouse.
Hadden said: 'It's about communicating and negotiating with the clubs. There are two clubs we don't have to do that with [Edinburgh and Glasgow are run by the Scottish Rugby Union], but there are a whole host of clubs that we need to get on very good terms with.
'We have a good relationship with some of the clubs but we haven't got that with them all, and obviously it's harder with the French clubs.
'We think we are making some headway, and we are delighted with the levels of co-operation we are getting at the moment.
'Monday's training day was a bit of a bolt from the blue and initially some of the clubs weren't enamoured with the idea, but they've all been fine in the end.
'We have had problems in the past, and I dare say there will be hiccups in the future, but it is a case of so far so good at the moment.'
Having got the squad together for the first time since they were knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina at the quarter-final stage in October, Hadden claimed he was happy with the shape the players are in.
'The initial feedback from our conditioning checks is that most of the guys are slightly down on where they were, but that's inevitable with the volume of games they are playing,' he said.
'I wanted to know if there were any serious issues that we needed to address, but there weren't.
'Once we analyse the data we've got from Monday, my gut feeling is that we will be quite happy with where we are. Having watched just about every minute of every game that everyone has played this year I think we've got a bunch of guys in good form, and I think one of the reasons for that is the conditioning work that we did in the summer, and we expect that to carry over into the Six Nations.
'So we're expecting to see dividends but we'll have to wait and see, because a lot of it depends on the amount of game time that each individual plays.'
Hadden also believes Scotland are capable of improving on their performance in the last Six Nations, when they ended up with the wooden spoon having managed only a solitary win over Wales.
'Obviously there are strategic goals that have been made public, but there are also private targets which we want to keep to ourselves,' he said.
'The gist of it is that we have nothing to fear in the Six Nations, and we'll be doing everything we can to get the first win under our belt against France and give ourselves a chance to do something really special in the Six Nations.'
