{"id":14156,"date":"2025-05-07T09:48:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T09:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/temo-mayanavanua-fiji-lock-to-leave-northampton-saints-at-end-of-season\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T09:48:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T09:48:55","slug":"temo-mayanavanua-fiji-lock-to-leave-northampton-saints-at-end-of-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/temo-mayanavanua-fiji-lock-to-leave-northampton-saints-at-end-of-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Temo Mayanavanua: Fiji lock to leave Northampton Saints at end of season"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Northampton Saints lock Temo Mayanavanua will leave the European Champions Cup finalists at the end of the season to return home to play in Fiji.<\/b><\/p>\n

The 27-year-old has made 16 appearances this season and scored a try in the 38-8 Champions Cup group-stage win<\/a> over Castres.<\/p>\n

Mayanavanua joined Saints following the 2023 World Cup and made his debut against Saracens that December.<\/p>\n

“I felt a really good buzz from the first day. Everyone made me feel like it was home and that it was a special group,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Going onto win the Premiership last season speaks volumes about that, and now progressing to the Investec Champions Cup Final echoes that too.”<\/p>\n

Mayanavanua has been playing club rugby away from Fiji for nearly eight years but added: “It has been a really tough decision to make, we have really loved our time here in Northampton. <\/p>\n

“The supporters, especially, have made us feel so welcome and that has made it so hard to choose whether to go home or stay.”<\/p>\n

Director of rugby Phil Dowson said Mayanavanua had made a “huge impact” at the club.<\/p>\n

He continued: “When we watched him play for his former club, we really liked how physical he was, but we probably didn’t see then how unbelievably skilful he was and how good a reader of the game he is. These are obviously facets of his game that will be sorely missed.<\/p>\n

“But off it, Temo has been a father figure to what is a young squad. He has looked after them and he has led in his own way. So, we are very sad to see him go because he has had a huge impact from the moment he came in and he will continue to for the rest of the season.”<\/p>\n

Mayanavanua started the game against Leinster on Saturday when Saints won 37-34 to reach the Champions Cup final.<\/p>\n

They now face league games against Exeter Chiefs and Saracens before taking on Bordeaux in the final on 24 May. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northampton Saints lock Temo Mayanavanua will leave the European Champions Cup finalists at the end of the season to return home to play in Fiji. The 27-year-old has made 16 appearances this season and scored a try in the 38-8 Champions Cup group-stage win over Castres. Mayanavanua joined Saints following the 2023 World Cup and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14158,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14156\/revisions\/14158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}