Former schools’ prospect Tom Stewart enjoying purple patch at Ulster

Crowned Schools’ Player in of the Year in 2019 while at Belfast Royal Academy, Stewart’s progress was hampered by injury and Covid.

The former Ireland U20 player has been upgraded to a first professional contract, toured South Africa with Emerging Ireland and made it four tries in his last three Ulster starts by bagging a brace of touchdowns in the side’s home bonus point win over Zebre on Friday night.

Both the hooker’s tries came from lineout mauls.

“I’ve gotten a bit of grief for dotting down over the line a couple of times and not giving the boys a bit of credit who do the work in front of me,” joked Stewart.

“Mauls are usually team tries and are done with the forwards, and it is just good that I get my name on the score sheet. But everyone knows it is the boys in front of me that put in the hard graft.”

Ulster have made their rolling maul a potent weapon with three of the six tries against the Italians coming from that route.

“We do a fair bit of work on the maul during the week, Roddy (Grant) is good at it and very technical around it,” added Stewart.

“We are coached well around it and I think everyone knows that it is a strength of ours now. In games you always have to rely on your strengths as well as your weaknesses and you need to know what your strengths are.”

All the hard work off the pitch has paid dividends for Stewart, who is learning as much as he can from the more experienced players in the side such as Rob Herring.

“Personally, I have done a bit of work behind the scenes,” he said.

"I think being injured for a while, I put a fair bit of work in to developing a bit of size and stuff and I think that has really helped.

“Watching rugby and even getting into training and watching boys like Rob Herring and John Andrew, who have been in the system for a while now. they are experienced and know how to do it, and I just try to learn and sponge in as much as they do.

“It’s [about] accountability, the coaches hold me accountable, and I hold them accountable; at the end of the day individually I want to be the best so I have to work on that to the best of my ability.”

Ulster face a top of the table clash at Leinster on Saturday night and Stewart is relishing the challenge.

Leo Cullen’s side are eight points clear of their northern rivals but Ulster have played a game less.

For Stewart, there is a potential head-to-head with Ireland hookers Ronan Kelleher and Dan Sheehan.

“They are two of the best hookers in the country and that is the standard that I want to be, and they are two boys that I would look up to,” he said.

“That is the standard that I want to push myself to and I’ll look forward to that.”