The Australian, who took over from McGeechan after last years World Cup, has not had the happiest of starts to his career as coach with a disappointing whitewash in the recent RBS 6 Nations championship.

The Scots take on the Barbarians at the weekend before leaving for a tough trip to New Zealand and Australia.

And McGeechan, speaking at the launch of an SRU initiative to revitalise university rugby in Scotland, insists Williams will get it right given time.

He said: Its been tough for Matt since he came in but I can see the progress hes made already.

It will take a while for the players to know what he wants but youll see more understanding coming through and thats when youll see the team start to really come together.

He wants to get to know the players and this tour will help him - and we hope were taking a big step forward in the support were putting in behind the scenes which then allows Matt to work solely on the rugby progress.

Hes trying to get all the winning elements together and hes saying that if we get these things right then the wins will start to look after ourselves.

At the moment weve got to work harder at doing the basic things very well.

However, the former Scotland coach admits whilst the trip Down Under will present an opportunity to blood some young players, the Scots cannot afford to be on the end of any morale-sapping thrashings.

He said: There is a balance to be had.

Psychologically a lot of the players are tired so on the one hand you are trying to build in a bit of rest and not overplay them but on the other hand you have a number of young players coming through who need to experience international and competitive rugby which is a step up from their professional games.

But we dont want huge defeats, the players have got to understand that and understand theyre going out to perform.

What we want is positive players on tour who are going out to show that we mean business.

Youve got to be competitive and what were trying to do is get the players stronger and in the shape where you physically can compete - and of course youve got to be clever with the rugby.

The difficulty is that although youre trying to get young players up to speed but international rugby is very much about the present.

If youre performing now then you can set all things right for the future.