Simon Loftus does not carry the weight of a nation's expectation on his shoulders. As the new coach to Scotland's men's volleyball team, his remit is vastly different to that expected of Craig Levein.
But he is as fiercely proud to hold a position at the head of a Scotland team, especially one that does not come around very often.

His former club coach at City of Glasgow Ragazzi, Tommy Dowens, held the position for 17 years, perhaps the longest serving of any Scotland national team coach, before retiring from the post in 2008.

After a short spell where Simon worked with an interim coach, Loftus has now been given the role to take Scotland forward.

But being a Scotland volleyball coach these days is to work with one hand behind your back. The best Scottish talent feeds into the Great Britain Olympic programme. Imagine the outcry if Levein lost Craig Gordon, Darren Fletcher and James McFadden to a British squad.

But Loftus knows it is for the greater good and took on the position knowing full well that he will perhaps never work with a full-strength squad.

"I think Tommy picked the right time to retire as he saw what was out there and wanted to spend time developing his coach education programme," Loftus states.

"I knew what I was getting into and the best Scottish players are always going to go to the Great Britain programme but a strong British programme can only help Scotland.

"I have a good relationship with the Great Britain set-up having been to the World Student Games and I am sure they will release players like Andy Benson and Paul Glissov - who are both doing well in Spain - to Scotland if they are not needed for the Great Britain programme.

"We also have Chris Lamont and Mark McGivern who are doing well in Belgium and they are part of the GB programme. This is a transition period for the Scotland team and the Scottish Volleyball Association realise that and I am sure they are looking at qualifying from the European Championship Small Nations group in two years time.

"This year we have a particularly hard group against hosts Andorra, Ireland, the Faroes and Cyprus in May and we know that is going to be tough.

"The association are keen that the priority is Scotland but I know that the best young players from Scotland will be head-hunted by the GB programme but it has to be appreciated that having a strong GB team far outweighs the advantages of getting short-term results for Scotland.

"I'm pretty pragmatic about it. We have a lot of young players but hopefully the older players in the squad will aid their development.

"So far everyone has bought in to what I've asked them to do and having Stevie Milne as my assistant is huge as his whole demeanour is superb.

"It is a huge honour to be appointed national team coach and I am grateful to the association for giving me this chance."

Loftus has an early chance to measure his team when they play in this month's Novotel Cup in Luxembourg when he will take an inexperienced team into a "baptism of fire" against Latvia, Austria and the hosts.

He then hopes to get his players together in early May to take part in a club invitation tournament in Leeds before they travel to Andorra for the Small Nations event.

"My role is different than Tommy's and I'll not be working as much on technique as he did," Loftus continues, "I won't see the players enough to do that and this is really something that should be done at club level.

"Tommy had the luxury of working with seven or eight players who were at his club and he also worked with them at international level.

"My role is more is to work on systems and to get the players to express themselves more. We have a limited international programme and we are not like some countries where players can get 200 or 300 caps.

"I played for the national side for 10 years and only won 69 caps and only a handful of Scottish players have won 100 caps.

"It would be great if I could get these guys to go on to reach 100 caps before the end of their career."

RM
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