SCRUM coach Graham Rowntree confirmed the British and Irish Lions will make front-row changes for the second Test after failing to tame ‘‘the Beast’’ in the 26-21 defeat to South Africa.

Phil Vickery was put through the mincer by Springbok loose-head Tendai Mtawarira and it was not until the introduction of Adam Jones and hooker Matthew Rees early in the second half that the Lions gained a foothold in the scrum.

The Welsh pair are now favourites to start in Pretoria on Saturday while further forward changes have not been ruled out.

Rowntree does not plan on repeating Jim Telfer’s notoriously brutal scrummaging session on the 1997 Lions tour but he will not pull punches in his analysis this week.

‘‘Yes, changes will be made,’’ he said. ‘‘We failed to keep a lid on the Beast at engagement time and he got under us. We didn’t dominate that engagement well enough and they had an incredibly powerful pack.

‘‘Phil is a very honest guy and by his own admission he struggled. He is upset. He is sore physically and mentally.

‘‘It is a collective thing and that is where I come in. I have to look at what went wrong.

‘‘We were penalised at three scrums in the first half.

That put us nine points down.

We will be looking very hard at those scrums.

‘‘The changes we made sorted it out. I was delighted with the impact Matthew Rees and Adam Jones had in that set piece. We got some good playable possession.’’ Immediately after the match, both captain Paul O’- Connell and head coach Ian McGeechan voiced concerns and frustration over the decisions made by referee Bryce Lawrence to penalise Vickery.

But Rowntree dismissed any complaints about South Africa’s tactics and admitted the Springbok pack – particularly the scrummaging of Mtawarira and hooker Bismarck du Plessis – had simply been too good.

‘‘The referee was rewarding the dominant scrum as we had asked him to do. They were going forward then their movement was upwards,’’ he said.

‘‘It was legal. We were just under a lot of pressure and we have to take that on the chin.

‘‘Du Plessis is very strong and with the Beast they were able to get stuck into Vicks.

‘‘There was one particularly uncomfortable scrum when we got lifted off the floor. If I was their scrum coach watching that I would have retired to Panama by now with a cigar.’’ Instead of sunning himself, Rowntree will spend the next week working on a solution not only to the set-piece problems but to the Springboks’ powerful driving maul.