{"id":481746,"date":"2026-03-18T06:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T06:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/481746\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T06:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T06:53:11","slug":"jj-van-der-mescht-northampton-lock-called-into-springboks-camp-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/481746\/","title":{"rendered":"JJ van der Mescht: Northampton lock called into Springboks camp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said Van der Mescht had &#8220;performed really well of his club this season&#8221; as he included the 23-stone lock in an online get-together for overseas-based players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For every South African, it is a target to play for South Africa,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c3ve1nx26l3o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Van der Mescht told BBC Look East in January.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Since you&#8217;re a little kid, you always want to play for the Springboks.&#8221;<\/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&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-481746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}