IT'S been eight months of hell for WP Nel, but at long last it looks as though he has turned a corner and is ready to start bullying opposition looseheads again.

So impressed was Gregor Townsend, the new Scotland head coach, with his work rate and determination at training that he is not even going down the usual line of starting a recovering player off the bench but has thrown him straight into the stating fifteen.

Nel is one of nine changes from the side that ended the RBS Six Nations Championship, which sounds as though Townsend is up to his old radical selection tricks again – but really is not.

The reality is that two of the nine changes are to replace players on the British & Irish Lions tour; three are due to players dropping out through injury; two more from players returning from injury and only two from players being rotated or rested.

The tricky selection has gone to Duncan Taylor, the Saracens centre, who is being asked to slot into the full back position, a role he has played at club level but not for Scotland. With Stuart Hogg on Lions duty and Sean Maitland injured, Townsend won't see this as a long-term option but it will patch a hole for a while.

After all Nel's trials and tribulations, though, he was the main focus of attention as Townsend unveiled his side on the rooftop terrace at the team's Singapore hotel.

The big South African-born prop, who qualifies on residency, has had a time to forget. The one thing no prop wants is a neck injury – with so much pressure on that part of the body in every scrum, any weakness there could mean the end of his career or worse.

That is exactly what Nel picked up playing for Edinburgh against Harlequins in the European Challenge Cup last year, ruling him out of the November Tests.

Three months of rest and he reckoned he was ready to play again; only to damage the same area again after just 27 minutes, coincidentally in the return match against Harlequins in January .

This time it needed surgery and almost six months on the side lines. Half an hour of action for the Barbarians, however, and Townsend reckons he is ready to face Italy in a Test.

"He has worked really hard, I was so impressed," said Townsend. "With someone who has had a serious injury, they can be a bit tentative but he has trained from day one – contact sessions, attack, defence scrummaging. He has coped really well.

"The game was really important for him; just to feel that he had got through it tackling, carrying ball, clearing contact and scrummaging.

"It is a huge boost to have somebody acknowledged as one of he best tightheads in the world at the last Rugby World Cup – somebody who was getting better and better and thriving at international level."

It is clear that Townsend has learned some of the lessons from the Six Nations. While the attacking play was top class, when opponents attacked Scotland through the forwards and tried to bully their way to victory, they proved a real threat. That was the core of the Ireland fightback, the losing half against Wales and the root cause of much of the grief against England.

With Nel available, there is bound to be more steel in the pack and Townsend has given it even more go-forward ballast by also throwing Josh Strauss in at the deep end after tearing a kidney in a heroic performance against France.

"Josh had a very serious injury, but in his recovery he only had to do six weeks of non contact," Townsend pointed out. "It meant he had a preseason of six weeks just doing fitness – which he loved. The contact side came at the end of the season so he has had four weeks now of full training.

"That's 10 weeks, but nothing replicates a game. Josh, like a number of our players, will have to find his feet pretty quickly, but it is brilliant that he, Matt Scott, Magnus Bradbury and WP Nel have trained so hard and are available.

"They all get an opportunity to play this week for us as coaches to see where they are as we head to Australia and Fiji."

The final notable piece of the jigsaw comes at lock, where Jonny Gray is rested after looking washed out and exhausted by the end fo the club season. With Richie, his brother, injured, it will be the first time since August 2015 that neither brother has been involved in a Scotland squad.

That creates a hole of Ben Toolis to show the kind of form he has been demonstrating all season for Edinburgh, getting a second bite of the international cherry after seeming to be unfairly blamed for the home loss to Italy two years ago, when he made his debut off the bench and was sin-binned eight minutes later.

"Ben [Toolis] has been in outstanding form. He is a line out leader, very good at competing for opposition ball, he is very athletic and works hard. We are exciting to see him working with Tim [Swinson] who is getting a chance to start for Scotland – which has not happened for a little while. Both players are in really good form," Townsend commented.

With six forwards one the bench – three front row and three specialist back row, though Rob Harley is presumably also covering lock – he is clearly anticipating a big forward battle.

Scotland [v Italy]: D Taylor (Saracens); D Hoyland (Edinburgh), M Scott (Gloucester), A Dunbar (Glasgow Warriors), T Visser (Harlequins); F Russell (Glasgow Warriors), A Price (Glasgow Warriors); A Dell (Edinburgh), R Ford (Edinburgh), WP Nel (Edinburgh), T Swinson (Glasgow Warriors), B Toolis (Edinburgh), J Barclay (Scarlets), J Hardie (Edinburgh), J Strauss (Glasgow Warriors). Replacements: F Brown (Glasgow Warriors), G Reid (Glasgow Warriors), Z Fagrson (Glasgow Warriors), R Harley (Glasgow Warriors), M Bradbury (Edinburgh), R Wilson (Glasgow Warriors), H Pyrgos (Glasgow Warriors), P Horne (Glasgow Warriors).The Herald: