Meet Alex Ross: Scottish Rugby Head of Athletic Performance & Sports Science

Speaking about the opportunity to work with Scottish Rugby from his base of operations at Oriam, Ross said: “So my role oversees athletic performance and sports science across the whole of Scottish Rugby, both men’s, women’s, sevens, national teams, as well as the pro teams. What really attracted me to Scottish Rugby was to be able to implement systems at scale, and to really be able to have a cohesive, connected, joined-up system. And I think this role will allow that to flourish.” 

Ross has held senior roles with three different Unions across his career to date, gleaning insight and knowledge from the Athletic Performance strategies of New Zealand, Argentina and the USA.   

Ross worked with the NZRU between 2012-2016, helping to prepare their players for success at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. He also worked with their Sevens players in preparation for Commonwealth, Olympic and Sevens World Cup campaigns.  

Speaking of his experiences in New Zealand, Ross said: “I’ve been fortunate to have many varied experiences. New Zealand really gave me a good grounding in what really good looks like. I was fortunate to be there in a time when they had a lot of success, both internationally as well as domestically. 

“The lesson that stuck with me there was always working backwards from the game and keeping rugby at the forefront.” 

Ross was employed by Los Pumas and the UAR in the period up to and including the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2019.  

“Argentina was a very different structure to New Zealand. It taught me the importance of connecting with the culture and integrating the culture into everything you do and how important that is. 

“It also taught me a lot about resilience and working in a somewhat under-resourced environment and the power of creativity to get over those barriers,” said Ross. 

Back in his native USA, Ross was Head of Performance for USA Rugby between 2021-2024 and his experiences there underpinned his understanding of the business side of high performance sport.  

“Sport is definitely a business in the USA, for better or for worse. What I learned from working there, both in rugby and out of rugby, is the importance of being very objective about what you do and being very disciplined to KPIs and metrics,” said Ross. 

As a former high performance athlete himself competing on the Sevens World Series for Team USA, Ross’ approach to player development has been framed by his own personal journey, he said: “My experience as a sevens player gives me empathy for the athlete.  That’s always stuck with me and shaped my perspective. Always something at the forefront of putting myself in their shoes. Having a little bit of experience and knowing what that is like is certainly helpful.” 

Rugby is not Ross’ only sporting influence as his career also includes two roles within Major League Baseball firstly with the New York Mets and more recently with the Miami Marlins.  

Ross explains there are correlations between Baseball and Rugby and the gains to be made by Scottish Rugby: “Rugby and baseball would be hard to think of two more disparate sports on the surface. But when you do dive into things, there are certainly lessons I learned in baseball that can be applied to rugby. 

“Baseball is a very quantifiable sport. It’s very metric driven, very data driven. I think there are lessons to be learned from rugby in that sense. Baseball is also great at being very disciplined to a key few meaningful variables and meaningful metrics and being very stubborn to sticking on those,” continued Ross.  

Ross commenced his role with Scottish Rugby in the autumn and has busied himself getting across his large brief and making the connections that will allow him to make a positive impact on Scottish Rugby. 

“I’ve had a chance to get across to most if not all of our different rugby environments. What’s really stood out is the quality of people that we have working here and how much good work is being done,” said Ross. 

“I think the real focus in the short term is building systems and structures and pathways to facilitate that good work that’s being done in isolated pockets in different areas and sharing that amongst our department to spread that IP across the union,” continued Ross. 

Ross has been impressed with how quickly the new Women’s Programme has bedded in at Oriam, saying: “Scottish Rugby is in new ground with the women’s programme and in transition stage and launched the women’s central programme here. Which has been very impressive with how that’s been able to get up and running. 

“My role is interacting with our people on the ground there, helping them, supporting them to set up the right structures in this new system that we’re implementing here (at Oriam). Likewise, how that women’s central programme interacts into our Celtic Challenge teams and setting up the structures to really upgrade the experience in those environments as well,” explains Ross. 

Having gotten his feet under the table over the past couple of months and established the areas where Scottish Rugby can make immediate gains, Ross is keen to pursue some new concepts in how athletic performance support is delivered and measured.    

Ross added: “So there’s two primary areas that I’m really interested in taking us in. One of those is personalised development plans and the other is measuring what matters. 

“Personalised development plans are a way of viewing players in and of themselves as opposed to just being members of the team. Of course, rugby is a team sport, team is at the focus and the teamwork is essential. But there’s also the element of each player has individual needs. And so it’s building plans that while keeping it team focused also attacks the player as an individual and gives them exactly what they need,” explains Ross. 

The other area of focus for Ross is ensuring Scottish Rugby is measuring the athletic performance markers that have the biggest impact on the game. 

Ross continues: “Measuring what matters within rugby is being very disciplined to the key variables that we can objectively show are going to impact performance on the field, which is ultimately what matters. 

“So as it relates to rugby, understanding what the key variables are on the field and the key outcomes that affect winning, working backwards from those, using different techniques and different technologies to be able to quantify those in a reliable way, and then being disciplined to working towards those as our outcome.”