De Jongh's Aiming To Catch Eye Of The Boks

- Neale Harvey

Wasps centre Juan de Jongh reckons he still has a shot at making South Africa’s 2019 World Cup team despite rendering himself temporarily unavailable for selection.

De Jongh has 19 caps and featured heavily in last year’s Rugby Championship, but made the difficult decision to turn his back on the Springboks this summer after ending a 10-year association with Cape Town based Super Rugby outfit the Stormers.

The 29-year-old now hopes his form for Wasps over the next two years will be enough to earn a recall from South Africa head coach Allister Coetzee – a man he knows well from the Stormers – when the World Cup in Japan comes along.

De Jongh told The Rugby Paper: “It was a really tough decision to come north because South Africa has a new rule where you have to have 30 caps to still play for the Springboks if you’re overseas.

“I haven’t got 30 caps yet but in a World Cup year you can still be called up and I have ambitions to represent South Africa on that stage, so my challenge now is to play well for Wasps and be in the best physical condition I can be to be picked.