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Div pleased with record win

Auckland - While he again insisted a rugby coach could never be completely satisfied, Springbok mentor Peter de Villiers said on Thursday he was pleased with his team's 87-0 victory over Namibia in Auckland.

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"I am very pleased with what we achieved today," De Villiers said.

"We started off loose, got our act together and when we stuck to our guns and played our match, we actually scored more points.

"It just shows you that it is a team game, and if individuals get ahead of themselves, sometimes the team will lose out."

South Africa's victory over their Southern African neighbours marked another milestone for the team as they bettered their Rugby World Cup winning margin of 66 points which was set against Uruguay in 2003.

De Villiers praised Bok skipper John Smit for ensuring the side lifted their game after a relatively unimpressive first half.

"Hats off to John for regrouping the team and getting things back on track," he said.

The Springboks kept a clean sheet after leaking only three points against Fiji last week, and have only conceded one try from three games - in their opening match against Wales in Wellington.

De Villiers said his squad had placed a lot of emphasis on their defence - under tackling specialist Jacques Nienaber - and that they now considered themselves to be among the best in that department.

"I said last week that we take pride in our defence and our try line," he said.

"We want to keep everyone out if we can, but we also understand that we can't always control those kinds of things.

"We work very hard on our systems defensively and in three games now we have showed that we are really up with the best."

The Bok coach, who has become far more tactful when addressing the media, would not accept that the mistakes his charges had made in the first half would have been capitalised on far more effectively by more formidable opponents.

"If it were another team we would have done things differently, so we can't assume that another team would have punished us, for we may not have made the same mistakes against another team," he said.

"You are talking about a perfect world and we are not in a perfect world, we are in New Zealand.

"We actually know that we are playing against the best in the whole world."

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