De Villiers angered by 'embarrassing' Springboks display

South Africa captain Jean de Villiers labelled his side's performance at King's Park "embarrassing" after they were beaten by Argentina for the first time.

The Springboks were beaten 37-25 in Saturday's Rugby Championship encounter - Juan Imhoff scoring a hat-trick as the visitors dealt South Africa's Rugby World Cup preparations a blow.

Argentina impressed throughout with a performance that suggests they could do well at the competition in England next month.

And, while De Villiers paid tribute to Argentina, the skipper was scathing in his assessment of South Africa's display.

"I would say that is a pretty embarrassing performance," he is quoted by Sky Sports.

"A lot of credit to Argentina and the way that they played – they played really well. They scored a couple of tries from first phase which is just not acceptable from our point of view.

"There is a lot for us to work on and I think we need to take a deep look at ourselves and definitely put in better performances than this because it was just not good enough.

"There are no excuses, we were just not good enough on the day.

"As a group we are bitterly disappointed and we did not do the jersey justice today."