The Bulls suffered yet another humiliating defeat when the Highlanders trounced them 54-17 on Friday night at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria.

Laurie Mains' rampant charges ran in eight tries and went to the top of the Super 12 log on 20 points after five games.

The New Zealanders will go back to Dunedin a happy team, having achieved two victories on their short South African sojourn. They last week narrowly accounted for the Stormers at Newlands.

The Highlanders capitalised on some sloppy defence and a myriad of handling errors from the Bulls. Heyneke Meyer will need to address his team's defence systems urgently, as they now have leaked 14 tries in their two last games - just not good enough at Super 12 level.

When Meyer does his analyses of this game later this week, the last try of the Highlanders will make for horror viewing. The visitors won a set scrum close to the Bulls 22m-line and substitute scrumhalf Billy Fulton sent the ball out to flyhalf Tony Brown.

The All Black pivot had enough time to delay his pass to Paul Steinmetz, who ran through for the simplest of tries without a Bulls defender even smelling him. That was schoolboy stuff and definitely not what one would expect from a Super 12 team.

Highlanders centre Ryan Nicholas was named Man of the Match for his hat-trick of tries, but teammates Jeff Wilson (pictured), Sam Harding and Taine Randell also played out of their skins.

The Bulls put together some promising attacking moves, but failed to convert them into tries through bad passing or sloppy handling and that led to turnovers - something you cannot afford against the clinical Highlanders.

The home team, however, came close to clinching a bonus point for scoring four tries, but a fierce onslaught just before the halftime whistle was scuppered by a handling error.

Scorers:

Highlanders - Tries: Ryan Nicholas (3), Jeff Wilson, Paul Steinmetz (2), Willie Walker, Jeff Wilson; Conversions: Tony Brown (4); Penalties: Brown (2).

Bulls - Tries: Chris le Roux, Wylie Human, James Dalton; Conversion: Franco Smith.