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Auckland - The Springboks have taken an intense personal pride to maintain the best defensive record at the Rugby World Cup, assistant coach Gary Gold said on Thursday.
The defending champions have totted up 153 points from their three pool wins, but have conceded only 19, the best in the tournament ahead of Friday's final group match against Samoa.
Forwards coach Gold said South Africa have worked on the defensive side of their game which they felt was lacking last year.
"There have been new principles brought in and certain aspects of a defensive system that we felt last year when we were poor defensively that we had to work on and aspects of the defence we felt we were lacking," Gold told reporters.
"Those have been big emphasis areas for us this year from a defensive point of view, areas that we felt we were hurt last year particularly against Australia."
Australia beat the Boks 41-39 with the final kick in Bloemfontein and South Africa conceded 30-plus in four other 2010 Tri-Nations Tests.
"Those are areas of focus that we put a lot of emphasis into when we got together in pre-season," Gold said.
"We are very happy to have only conceded 19 points (just one try) in the group now and no other team has conceded less than us at the World Cup, so after three games that's a good start to the competition but hopefully we have a long way to go still.
"It's become personal now from our point of view that we want to continue to keep our defensive record the best in the competition."
Gold said the breakdown interpretations have also been a massive concern for the Springboks with Welshman Nigel Owen to control their game with Samoa.
"We've done a lot of work on the analysis of the referees. We felt we had to because through no fault of theirs... there is slight interpretation differences," he said.
"Between the northern and southern hemispheres there is a slight interpretation difference, particularly at the breakdown.
"From our point of view the breakdown has been a massive area of concern and work for us, but we have a simple philosophy and the responsibility is ours to clean up, we can't allow the referee that responsibility.
"If we are good enough at the breakdown and we do our job properly then we will make his life easy."
The Springboks will be pitting a total of 723 international caps and an average age of 27 against an experienced Samoan line-up (average age 30) at North Harbour on Friday.
"One of the things that age does show is an incredibly experienced bunch," Gold said.
"In 2003 (champions) England were the oldest team at the World Cup, quite substantially, and look what happened to them.
"Again it's a fine balance and one that we believe we've got right and I feel their (Samoa's) coaches feel the same way as well."
Match captain Victor Matfield is 34, Danie Rossouw 33, Jean de Villiers 30, while squad skipper John Smit, who will on the bench, is 33.
