{"id":27107,"date":"2026-03-17T15:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/jj-van-der-mescht-northampton-lock-called-into-springboks-camp\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:05:14","slug":"jj-van-der-mescht-northampton-lock-called-into-springboks-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/jj-van-der-mescht-northampton-lock-called-into-springboks-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"JJ van der Mescht: Northampton lock called into Springboks camp"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Northampton second row JJ van der Mescht is in contention for a senior South Africa call-up after being invited to a virtual alignment camp by the Springboks.<\/b><\/p>\n

Van der Mescht represented South Africa Under-20s at their 2019 age-grade World Championships, but is yet to be capped for the senior side.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old has been in fine form since arriving at Saints from Stade Francais last summer, with only team-mate Sam Graham registering a higher percentage of dominant carries among Prem forwards, according to Opta stats.<\/p>\n

Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said Van der Mescht had “performed really well of his club this season” as he included the 23-stone lock in an online get-together for overseas-based players.<\/p>\n

“For every South African, it is a target to play for South Africa,” Van der Mescht told BBC Look East in January.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Since you’re a little kid, you always want to play for the Springboks.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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

Northampton second row JJ van der Mescht is in contention for a senior South Africa call-up after being invited to a virtual alignment camp by the Springboks. Van der Mescht represented South Africa Under-20s at their 2019 age-grade World Championships, but is yet to be capped for the senior side. The 26-year-old has been in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27107","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\/27107","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=27107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27109,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27107\/revisions\/27109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}