After a week that has seen Scotland’s football and rugby teams sharing some ideas at the Oriam facility in Edinburgh, Gregor Townsend offered a reminder of the day he had learned something about one of his own sport’s fundamentals from the round ball game’s greatest modern coach.

The Scotland head coach has previously made no secret of his admiration for Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City and former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss who has, over the past decade, repeatedly demonstrated that there is no need to compromise on playing style in order to achieve consistent success and in his own eagerness to learn, had spent time with the All Blacks. Much has been discussed in the last two decades about the benefits of cross-code cooperation, but as Townsend noted, sometimes there can to be gained in simply gaining the perspective of one who may not be versed in a sport, but has both the intelligence to recognise its special qualities and the self-assurance to express it.

“What (Guardiola) loves about rugby is that we pass the ball backwards and look forwards. He said that is what he wants his team to do, look forwards all the time,” Townsend explained.“I had never thought of that concept. We talked about work rate off the ball. It was a common theme for what we do and what he does. He talked about a last minute winning goal. He was raving about the work of one of his forwards who had backtracked and managed to win the ball back. Two minutes later they score a goal and for him it was all about the work of that player. We are trying to look at the same thing as we analyse our game.”

There have been comparisons of notes with Scotland football manager Alex McLeish this week, too, largely around the management of players, he said, rather than playing styles or tactics and Townsend also admitted to having previously discussed with football managers the pros and cons of the rugby convention of naming teams days before major matches.

Whereas in football the line-up can be withheld until very close to kick off and even then the formation to be applied, may not be immediately obvious, there is no opportunity to surprise or be surprised in terms of personnel when it comes to professional rugby. In a sport already so much more structured than other versions of football, that has long seemed to be something of a missed opportunity, further reducing the need for players to think for themselves as it does.

Townsend defended rugby’s regulations on the basis that players prefer to know early in the week where they will be lining up and when, but they generally know that a couple of days before public team announcements, so it is hard to see why those in the camp could not be trusted to keep their mouths shut for a couple more days, particularly in the knowledge that to do otherwise might give the opposition an advantage.

He made a valid point that those choosing to name their teams earlier than is necessary, as Scotland have done this week, naming their line-up a day ahead of the Springboks, could be seeking a psychological advantage by expressing confidence in doing so.Yet it is tempting to wonder whether, for example, it could have worked to his team’s advantage if opposite number Rassie Erasmus had not known until just before kick off, that the substantial presence of Sam Skinner, the Exeter Chiefs lock who performed so well last weekend, was being deployed in the back-row in a bid to neutralise the expected Springbok advantage in terms of weight and power.

In saying so Townsend claimed he had never changed his team after finding out who is playing for the opposition and that is partly a matter of keeping faith with his own thinking and players. However, he admitted that it might influence the messages delivered to his men before a match.

“You can have that further conversation to say ‘Look, they’ve picked a person who’s never played in this position before, who’s never played a game at this level, let’s make sure we test him out,’ but you would never change your selection,” he insisted.

On that basis Skinner can probably anticipate being asked a few additional questions this weekend, albeit in his particular instance, the evidence so far is that he is unlikely to quail at the prospect.