Tighthead prop Scott Wilson admits he is still learning on job as he approaches half-century of appearances for Ulster

The 23-year-old Queen’s front-rower has already represented Emerging Ireland, scored a try for Ireland A against Spain in November and was called up to the Irish senior team’s summer tour to Georgia and Portugal.

Wilson himself has been surprised by his own rapid rise.

“I can't believe how quickly the last two years have gone. It's nice to get Uni out of the way and then be able to completely focus on the rugby, trying to take week by week, game by game, review and move on,” said Wilson, speaking ahead of Sunday’s Challenge Cup clash against the Cheetahs.

“I hope I've developed since the first game. There's been a few since then, but I think since Jimmy (Duffy) came in, the scrumming is going hopefully massively in the right direction.

"I feel like I'm finally getting on top of it and sort of understanding the meaning of it, and I can definitely see the progress in training and hopefully in the last few games; not that there was lacking in other coaches: previous coaches sort of gave me that opportunity and showed me the sort of building blocks, but Jimmy has been able to sort of fine-tune a couple of the sort of bad habits that maybe I had and got rid of them, and brought what I can contribute to the rest of the front row.”

Although he has graduated from university, Wilson is studying to make his performances on the pitch better.

“I would mostly focus on that sort of set-piece stuff, around the scrum, where I can improve on that,” he said.

“The scrumming stuff is where I would look at mostly during the week, and then I sort of let my stuff around the pitch take care of itself.

“I would spend a lot more time on the scrummaging than the ball carrying – I try not to think too much about the ball carrying. I feel like the less I think about it, the better it is, as bad as that maybe sounds.

"I sort of give myself a wee bit during the week and then if I'm happy enough, then usually the way it works in the game is I can get off to a good start, whether that's a good scrum or a good involvement, then I feel like the rest of the game sort of takes care of itself.”

Wilson is enjoying packing down against Wallaby prop Angus Bell in training.

“It’s been great, Belly is a completely different type of loosehead than we have,” he added. “He's quite tall, he's strong. We've scrummaged slightly higher and he's been massive in helping me because obviously when we have two Ulster frontrows scrummaging against each other in training, we're both trying to achieve the same thing and then when you come against other teams during the weekend, they're obviously all scrummaging different styles.

“So being able to bring him in with a player of his calibre, with 50 caps for Australia, and show his different styles of scrummaging against me, it's been able to help my problem-solving and develop that way.”

Wilson will come up against the Cheetahs on Sunday in the Challenge Cup but doesn’t feel there is much difference in technique between northern and southern hemisphere props.

“I would say [the difference is] more the stature. If you look at Angus’ stature compared to Sam Crean, Sam Crean is a lot smaller of a loosehead, very strong when he's down there.

“Compared to Belly, it would be quite hard to get someone his size down as easy, so I would look at it as the sort of size comparison compared to whether they're southern or northern hemisphere.”