New £33 million facility will boost Scottish football - Stewart Regan

Scottish football took a new direction with the official opening of Oriam sports performance centre in Edinburgh, according to Stewart Regan.

The Scottish Football Association chief executive believes the #33million facility at Heriot-Watt University will help develop young footballers and match officials.

The facility will also become a home to Scottish rugby and will also cater for other sports such as basketball, handball, squash and racketball.

However, Regan is excited about the possibilities for football and confirmed that the senior national team will in time use the centre as a base.

He said: "We said in 2011 that we wanted to have a home for performance and this has been delivered on time and on budget.

"What we will be doing is bringing our coaching, our referee development and all of our national youth team activity and this is where we can hopefully develop our pipeline of talent that will eventually go on and play for Scotland.

"Clearly we are part way through a campaign at the moment but it would be our intention that the national team use the facilities and why wouldn't they?

"They are amazing facilities to complement everything that we have at our clubs around Scotland.

"A key part of the performance strategy was to actually have a home where it became an inspirational environment for up and coming footballers.

"To have a whole range of services as well as pitches to play on like first-class strength and conditioning, sports medicine support, hydrotherapy, performance analysis, bio-mechanics; you name it, we have the facilities here and this we hope will make a difference."

Meanwhile, the search for a new performance director - who will be based at the centre - continues with Regan insisting the appointment will be made as soon as possible.

Former Scotland international Brian McClair left the post in July after 17 months.

Regan said: "We are still in the recruitment phase, the long-list stage.

"We have gone out to market. We are using an agency from London and they are casting the net far and wide.

"We have a number of applicants that we will be considering in the coming weeks and months."