Lood de Jager has opened up on the pericarditis diagnosis that ruled him out of the 2023 World Cup, describing the four-month recovery as an unexpected source of perspective that has sharpened his hunger to extend his international career into a third World Cup campaign.
The lock first felt symptoms while on tour in Argentina in 2023 — shortness of breath and chest pressure — before a Johannesburg specialist confirmed the diagnosis the day before the World Cup squad announcement. The condition, inflammation of the protective sac around the heart, was caused by training through a viral infection.
"As soon as anybody hears it's your heart, it's like the red lights go off," De Jager said. "But once you sit down with the specialist and they take you through how we're going to control it and they tell you it's serious, but you can recover from this — things start to settle down."
At his lowest point, climbing a flight of stairs left him breathless. His rehabilitation began with walks around his Paarl neighbourhood, carefully monitored heart rate and a gradual rebuild over roughly four months. "In a weird way it was actually for me a good thing because I got an appreciation for things you take for granted, like running or being able to train."
Now 33 and based in Japan, De Jager is one of only three players still active from South Africa's 2015 World Cup squad, alongside Eben Etzebeth and Pieter-Steph du Toit. "I used to look at the old guys and I was like, 'that guy's 33, how's he still playing rugby?' And now I'm 33, and I'm like 'okay, now I understand'. You still have that hunger, you still feel you can do it."
On the scrum, De Jager aligned with scrum coach Daan Human's stated objective of driving straight through the middle, dismissing All Blacks coach Dave Rennie's suggestion that the Springbok front-rowers walk around. "The props have the biggest battle to fight. For us it's just applying as much pressure as we can — we want to scrum through the middle."
He acknowledged that lineout preparation consumes more training time than scrummaging given the volume of formations and situations involved, particularly the work done to disrupt New Zealand's lineout.
On the card record that includes a yellow against the All Blacks in Cape Town and a red against France — both issued by Angus Gardner — De Jager was measured. "The ref gets a job to do and the TMO gets a job to do. You just have to accept it." He rejected height as a mitigating factor in high-tackle incidents, noting that late steps from opponents create dynamic situations that are difficult to adjust to in real time.