Ulster and Australia prop Angus Bell believes the mantra of “no scrum, no win” in rugby is becoming redundant after the first three rounds of the Six Nations.

Italy dominated the scrum against Ireland and France but lost both games, while England had the upper hand at the set piece against Andy Farrell’s men last Saturday. But it made little impression on the scoreboard as the team in green romped to a record victory at Twickenham.

“That's the beauty of rugby...so many aspects,” said Bell. “I can't comment because I don't really know how the team operates their system but I don't think ‘no scrum, no win’ really matters too much.

“As you know the game's getting quicker and Ireland had a good enough base to attack off and it was really exciting rugby.

placeholder image — Ulster’s Angus Bell. (Photo by Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press)

“It's probably the first test match I've sat down and watched with real intent because I thought it was a real contest even up until the 60-minute, 70-minute mark...still things happening that were super exciting and the scrums were great contests.

"I've played against England many times, they're great scrummagers, so when you get to that level one little mistake gets amplified by 10 because of how quality the people are you’re going against."

Bell, capped 44 times for the Wallabies, can sympathise with Dan Sheenan and Tadgh Furlong who were both lifted out of the scrum in the Italian game.

“I guess you just move on to the next moment you can win,” he said. “I've been on the receiving end of some seriously brutal scrums, I'm not one to sit here and judge anything whatsoever, I'm still 25, I'm still young and I'm still learning too and so would those lads be as well.

“I played Italy last year and they beat us and their scrum was unbelievable too, so Italy are a class team, we see that now they're competing in every single game in the Six Nations and winning against massive Tier 1 nations.”

Bell is on the bench this weekend for the clash with the Ospreys having scored a world-class try last time out against Cardiff, replicating a score he got for Australia against France in November.

“I'm pretty heavy at the moment, about 130 kilos, so it's hard to balance both (speed and power) I’ve played a lot of being younger back row and stuff like that, so I've always been relatively fast with my size,” he said. “So, no, I don't think it's really concentrating on that.

“My first port of call and my first job is to scrum so I concentrate a lot on that during the week and try and get that as right as possible to produce results on the weekend.

"And if my scrum, my set piece, my defence and my line-out role is all on point then it gives me the opportunity.

ULSTER: Michael Lowry, Werner Kok, James Hume, Jude Postlethwaite, Zac Ward, Jack Murphy, Nathan Doak, Eric O’Sullivan, Tom Stewart, Scott Wilson, Iain Henderson, Charlie Irvine, Matthew Dalton, David McCann, Bryn Ward.

Replacements: Rob Herring, Angus Bell, Bryan O’Connor, Harry Sheridan, Marcus Rea, Conor McKee, Jake Flannery, Ben Carson.