By Phil Harlow
Hooker Lee Mears admits there needs to be a marked improvement in England's scrummaging after their disappointing display against Australia last week.
A revitalised Wallaby pack got on top of England, and Mears said he and his team-mates would have to make amends against South Africa on Saturday.
"They got the better of us, so we deserved the stick," he told BBC Sport.
"It was disappointing, but South Africa will pose a different problem. We know we're going to have to step it up."
England went into last week's game with many fans expecting a repeat of last year's 12-10 victory in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, when a heroic scrummaging display by Andrew Sheridan, Mark Regan and Phil Vickery put Australia under the cosh.
But the much-maligned Wallaby scrum has come on leaps and bounds since that game in Marseille with new coach Robbie Deans bringing in Mears' former Bath coach Michael Foley in to help with the rebuilding.
"Australia had their back to the wall," said Mears.
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"They had a few different players, and Michael Foley has done a very good job at sorting things out.
"We were frustrated because we didn't really get going in the scrum. We've come in for a bit of criticism and rightly so.
"It was one of the better scrums I've faced at Test level, but it was very difficult because a lot of scrums went down and the referee had to take it into his hands and he gave some free-kicks and penalties against us."
Many of referee Marius Jonker's decisions went against England at the scrum, with Matt Giteau kicking two of his six penalties as a direct result of infringements at the set-piece.
The scrum was a messy affair for much of the match at Twickenham with numerous set-pieces ending up on the floor.
Scrums can collapse for a variety of reasons with the force of the collision between the two packs sometimes resulting in the players losing their feet, while the difficulty in the four props "binding" onto each other - holding each others' shirts, effectively - can also be a contributory factor.
Former England hooker Brian Moore has called for front-row forwards to have to wear old-fashioned shirts rather than the skin-tight style favoured in the modern game.
"Designed to hinder the would-be tackler, they have the unintended effect of also making it much harder for props to bind in scrums," Moore wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
England coach Martin Johnson suggested Australia had adopted streetwise tactics to get the better of their opponents.
"Last week every scrummage seemed to end up on the floor," said Johnson.
"I think it will be a different game this time (against South Africa) - we'll have a contest at the scrum."
And Mears agreed that Saturday's Test against world champions South Africa should offer a different - but no less difficult - challenge.
"The Springboks love to scrum: they take it as a pushing contest, and that's exactly what we expect," said Mears.
"South Africa love their props and hookers, whereas in England a lot of the time we love our golden boy sexy fly-halves... But I'm quite happy for them to get the plaudits as it usually means we've done our jobs properly."
South Africa have delayed their team announcement until Thursday after injuries to prop Gurthro Steenkamp and hooker Bismarck du Plessis stretched their front-row resources to the limit.
But Mears insisted whoever pulled on the green jersey at Twickenham would pose a formidable challenge.
"If John Smit (who has been playing at prop) comes back to hooker he's a World Cup-winning captain so it's hardly weakening them in that regard," he said.
"They always have strength in depth at prop and hooker - they'll be fine."
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