Greig Laidlaw has confessed to having mixed feelings over new coach Alan Solomons’ policy of flooding Edinburgh with players from South Africa.
And he insisted young Scottish talent will still have a future route to rugby’s professional stage north of the border.
Solomons sparked a fresh wave of anger at the weekend when he snapped up his fifth Springbok star since arriving in the summer.
But as he stepped up preparations for Saturday’s Heineken Cup showdown with French giants Perpignan, skipper Laidlaw claimed Solomons was doing the right thing to get the capital side back to winning ways.
The scrum-half declared: “Alan has felt the need to bring in a few people he knows. What is happening is not within my control as a player. We can only control what is happening on the pitch.
“I consider myself lucky to have come through the system within this country and I learned a lot off the Scottish players.
“We do need to be careful where we are going because there is a lot of good young talent in Scotland that can come through. Their time will come, I am sure.
“The academy system is being sorted out and maybe in the future they won’t want to bring in so many guys from overseas. But what is happening is happening and we can’t control that.
“The effect on the team dynamic is not brought up for discussion everyone is part of Edinburgh.
“They are welcomed in because we need to be tight-knit on the field. There are foreigners in every squad in every part of the world.
“And we are all one here when we are on the pitch or at training.”
Laidlaw added: “We do remember there are only two Scottish pro teams and it is very important to have as many Scots boys involved as possible.
“You also want the clubs to be as successful as they can be and in our situation it was very important for Alan to get things going.
“And we are starting to get things going now. It is good for the home-based boys to see what the South Africans do we can learn from them.
“The likes of Willem Nel and especially Cornell du Preez have been great signings for us. If used in the right way, they can help us become better players.”
Laidlaw and co need to snuff out the challenge of Perpignan at Murrayfield to keep alive their quest to grab a surprise Euro quarter final slot.