WP Nel feels stronger as he prepares for return to Scotland starting line-up

WP Nel believes he returns to the Scotland starting line-up a stronger person after overcoming his latest injury setback. Nel will start a NatWest 6 Nations match for the first time in two years after being drafted into Gregor Townsend's team for Saturday's clash in Italy.

The prop missed most of last season with a career-threatening neck injury which required surgery and he then aggravated the same problem at the start of this campaign.

The Edinburgh player fought back to fitness in time for the autumn Tests but suffered a broken arm in the first half of the first game against Samoa and missed the start of the Six Nations.

But, after coming off the bench against England and Ireland, the South African-born forward is determined to keep moving forward.

Nel said: I must say there were tough times, especially with the neck thing, that was my biggest thing.

The arm can happen any time, whatever, but it's been a tough two years.

It's mentally made me stronger, I've worked harder and I feel I'm in a better place than I was two years back, so there's positives and there were some negatives, but it's just looking ahead now and putting all the injuries behind me and look at the job moving forward.

It's a front-row neck injury, so there were a lot of things running through my mind, that's true, and I wondered if I would ever come back as good as I've been or even better.

It was just down to a good medical team, they've helped me a lot and we've overcome all the battles so far.''

Nel quickly brushed off the broken arm setback to fight back into contention.

It felt like something was going on having played 10 years without injuries and just a couple of clean-ups, but it's rugby, you can't really choose when you want to get injured, it's just what happened, it's life and it's what you make of it,'' he said.

Are you going to come back just to be back or are you going to come back stronger and challenge for that three jersey or whatever you want to challenge for?''