Hot on the heels of a weekend of unremitting good news from Scotland’s professional teams, their first away double since the Magners League was set up and the high-profile repatriation of a couple of players from the national side, comes an initiative designed to raise the number of home-based players making it into the paid ranks.

The first sign of the latest move came yesterday when Sean Lineen, the Glasgow coach, lost no time after returning from his team’s 35-24 win in Belfast to announce a trio of signings, two of them players who have been associated with the club as apprentices, but also including a prop plucked from the relative obscurity of the GHA club, with Lineen predicting great things for him.

What makes John Welsh different is that he missed out on the usual age-grade production line and seemed destined to play out his career in the amateur ranks. Five years ago he was involved in the Under-18 Pathway squads, but did not do enough to go farther than the Glasgow District side until a conversation between Lineen and Walter Malcolm, a former Glasgow player now on the club’s board, rang him up and said: “Look, I have this special player here.”

Lineen saw him and agreed. “I was really impressed, he is a good player, something special,” he said. “He has got stuck in, the players like him and he has a really good attitude. He has been with us for a few months now, working on his strength and fitness, as a prop he has a bright future.”

Inspired by this, Lineen is now looking to uncover more hidden talents lurking in the amateur game, appealing yesterday for club coaches to get in touch, and hinting that he is thinking of formalising the process later in the year.

“Players mature at different rates, but we tend to dismiss them if they have not come through by their early twenties,” he said. “We are a small country, though, and cannot afford to let them go. I think John Welsh would agree that he did not do himself any favours when he was 18 or 19, but all credit to him. He came through that, got stuck in and got himself fit.

“All over Scotland, there are good club players and we are looking and getting information about them. We can’t be everywhere but I have no problem with coaches from anywhere ringing me up and telling me about players they have with the talent to go to the next level. There will be gems all over the place.”

His approach comes only a few days after Craig Chalmers, his former Scotland partner, complained that too many of his players with professional potential were being ignored because they had missed out on the age-grade system. He reckons that he has five in the Melrose team who won the Scottish Cup yesterday capable of making the step up, but who have been pigeonholed as promising amateurs.

If nothing else, Lineen’s initiative goes a long way towards further strengthening the ties between the professional ranks and the top end of the domestic club game, and with both Glasgow and Edinburgh demonstrating at the weekend, with their wins away to Ulster and the Ospreys - the first Scottish win at the Liberty Stadium - the professional ranks are also finishing the season in robust health.

For Lineen, there were innumerable positives to come out of the game at Ravenhill, including the form of Max and Thom Evans, Lome Fa’atau demonstrating why he was signed with a trademark try to set the team on their way, and another sublime performance from Dan Parks to earn himself the third man-of-the-match award in four games since he returned to Glasgow from Scotland’s disappointing Six Nations.

“He is really doing it for us,” Lineen said. “With both teams winning, we deserve a bit of praise for the way things are going for Scottish pro teams. The players have responded fantastically well and Dan Parks has shown an amazing determination to come back from the way he was being talked about after the Six Nations.

“He is up there, getting cut - he has four stitches in his lip - getting stuck in and seems to be enjoying it. I’m delighted with the way he is playing at the moment. He is doing really well, leading from the front.”

It is a mood of optimism reflected at Edinburgh, where Alan MacDonald touched down four minutes after the game should have ended to complete a narrow, but deserved victory, his side having scored the only tries of the match, with Nick De Luca back to his sparkling preChristmas best to lead the way.