Meg Jones

“The four months between my dad dying and my mum passing away were so tough, she became really dependent on the alcohol to the point where she was basically sedentary. You try and intervene, but quite frankly you have to allow them to suffer in their own suffering.”

It was another typical Meg Jones performance. Her first try opened the scoring for Leicester Tigers, a left-foot step easing her round the first Sale Sharks defender before a second sent her past the full-back and across the line to score. That same step made short work of Sharks’ defence again a few minutes later, the centre darting between two helpless props for her second of the game. The hat-trick score was created and finished by the Red Rose, sending Natasha Jones through with a short pass before regathering on the wraparound and cantering in for a third. And that was just the first half. 

In a performance rounded off with thirteen tackles to go along with nineteen points, Meg powered Leicester Tigers to a crucial 38-17 win over fellow strugglers Sale, their first ever PWR win at Welford Road.

Anyone who has watched Meg Jones on a rugby field knows there’s something different about her. Born and bred in Cardiff, she’s played the game since the age of six, used to go to bed with a rugby ball in her hand, literally, and by aged twelve was better than any of the boys she played with at her club Glamorgan Wanderers. By seventeen she’d made her England sevens debut, by eighteen she was a Red Rose in fifteens, and by twenty she was starting in a World Cup final. 

She’s a player with an instinctive rugby brain, custom built for the big occasion, but what sets her apart is a grit and determination that some are just born with. And it’s because of that determination and dedication that, as she crossed for her third try against Sale at Welford Road, you wouldn’t have known Meg was carrying the weight of the passing of her mum, Paula, just a few weeks before, only four months after the death of her dad, Simon. 

Asking ‘how are you?’ is too big a question to expect Meg to answer, so instead we ask, ‘how are you today?’. “I like that … how am I today?” ponders Meg as we meet on a cold Tuesday morning at the Tigers training ground. “I was up early and I’ve been busy all morning, so I haven’t really sat in my thoughts yet. The fact I’ve mentioned it and didn’t cry is always a positive. Rugby has been my escape a little bit, so I’ve enjoyed being in and being full on, because it’s kept me busy.

“The grieving process is wild you know, sadness, anger, I’m in that searching period,” she says. “So, it’s kind of a good space to be in, but also can probably become a spiral effect, but I’m searching for answers and help as well. 

“I’ve been trying to be really transparent with how I’m feeling. It’s not easy for everyone, I’m quite an open book anyway. Even just telling people, it allows you to articulate it in ways that you probably hadn’t felt that you could articulate it before. It gives me a sense of relief as well, I hate people looking at me as if they feel sorry for me, so I try and say it in a way that yeah, my mum’s passed away, but it’s also now given me an opportunity to reflect on those amazing memories.”

Paula, who was from Bristol, worked for the NHS as a neuro nurse for over thirty years, but battled with alcoholism for much of her life. “My mum was an addict, she was an alcoholic, but when she passed it was unexpected, let’s say, because she was a functioning alcoholic,” explains Meg. “My mum and dad had been divorced for ten years, but she carried a lot of resentment around him for leaving her because of the alcohol. There’s more ins and outs, but she grieved massively, and she was such a proud woman she would never let anyone know she was sad. 

“Those four months between my dad dying and my mum passing away were really tough, because she became really dependent on alcohol to the point where she wasn’t working and was basically sedentary.

“You try and intervene, but quite frankly you have to allow them to suffer in their own suffering, which is really hard to watch. And you can’t enable, you can’t clean up after them or take the alcohol away because you won’t fix the root cause.”

Simon, who had worked as a plumber in Cardiff, died from lung cancer shortly after watching Meg feature for Great Britain at the Paris Olympics rugby sevens. “My dad was so down to earth, he just worked enough to have a few pints on a Friday night,” she says. “I embody so much of my dad in the way he thinks, the way he motivated himself, the way he inspired people around him. 

“He didn’t have many GCSEs or O levels, but he was a really practical man. He loved history and science, and he used to teach me some random facts. He’d do magic tricks, he was a great storyteller, he had a small circle but was the most genuine bloke ever really. And he loved snooker. 

“He was the one that always told me if you want to be good at something, you’ve got to live, drink, eat and sleep it essentially, and that was when I started going to sleep with a rugby ball in my hand.” 

It’s been a whirlwind few months for the 21-cap Red Rose; processing the comedown from the Olympics and beginning preparations for a home World Cup would be enough to fill up most people’s time, but that pales in comparison to experiencing the grief for losing a parent for the first time, before going through it all again within just four months. 

“My dad’s passing was my first real grief,” she says. “He had lung cancer, so I was sort of grieving him while he was alive which was a very bizarre concept. That was strange, but yeh sadness is very new to me, it’s that feeling of a very heavy heart, anxiety, worry; I get those feelings quite regularly now. 

“I’ve had an amazing support network around me: Celia [Quansah, Meg’s partner], family and friends in Cardiff, and I’ve been speaking to a bereavement therapist as well. 

“I’m probably not at that acceptance stage yet,” she adds. “Yesterday I was looking through photos and getting welled up and crying and really in my feelings. But I was thinking on my way over here, my mum gave me so much, so many values that I just relish in my day to day, and I’m living on through those values: hard work and resilience. 

“Being an addict is a resilient characteristic, because you don’t want to do it, but you’re doing it. It reminds me of those days when I don’t want to be training, but I’m doing it because, you know, I’m probably a little bit addicted to it as well.”

Changing perceptions on alcoholism has become a passion of Meg’s in the wake of her mum’s passing. “My mum carried a lot of shame and embarrassment around about being an alcoholic, which I want to change. It’s way more common than you think, I talk about her and people go, ‘yeah, my partner drinks every day after work’, and that was my mum.

“She was an NHS worker, she was so loyal to her work and worked relentlessly, she got an award for the most shifts on the bounce, I think it was like thirty night shifts. She was really invested in looking after people, but one thing she didn’t do was to look after herself. She showed me how important that was, even though she didn’t possess it at times.”

As a young Meg grew from rugby obsessive to professional rugby player, both her parents played significant roles in her journey along the way. “My dad didn’t actually want me to play rugby initially, my mum was the one who pushed him to allow me to play,” says Meg. “He just didn’t want his little girl getting hurt. He wasn’t a rugby man, but he was the one who was standing behind the posts, catching a ball for me and kicking it back, not giving me technical points but if it went over, thumbs up. That would be an hour before my actual training session and that was at the age of fourteen. So, he was fully invested in my rugby career.”

It all began when her dad had started taking her older brother down to Glamorgan Wanderers, and it wasn’t long until Meg was demanding to be taken along too. “At the time I had a buzz cut,” she says, “my dad had given me a buzz cut so I looked like a boy, not shaped up or anything, it was a shambles. It was just a training session, but I got player of the session, and the comments on the side were like, ‘that new boy Megan is really good’.

“I’m not from that area, but Ely in Cardiff is quite a socioeconomically deprived area, so a lot of those boys used the club as an escape: a lot of single mums or single-parent houses, some that didn’t have mum and dads and would have to be taken to rugby, but the community would come and pick them up. And it was just such a community-embodied environment, and it taught me from a young age how important it was to look after the people next to you.”

Being the only girl naturally came with its challenges. “I didn’t gain respect immediately, I wasn’t the loudest, but what did earn respect was how I played,” she says. “I’d go to games, and they’d say, ‘I’m not tackling the girl’, and then I’d score tries and they’d be like, ‘we’ve got to start tackling the girl’. 

“Being the only girl within the rugby community, and when you’re going in from a working-class family – because it is quite a posh-boy sport –from a young age I learned that if you work hard, if you’re good enough, you’re good enough. I remember I trialled for Cardiff Schools at under-12s, kind of like county, and I knocked out one of the boys from the team. His dad was one of the key sponsors, but I trialled ridiculously well, and they couldn’t not pick me. It used to be called Cardiff Schoolboys; they’ve taken the boys bit out now.” 

By sixteen, Meg was so good that she was personally courted by then Wales coach Rhys Edwards to start training with the senior team, who were in preparations for the 2014 World Cup. However, a gut feeling told her that the Welsh setup was not her future: instead it led her across the River Severn to Hartpury College, an institution of rugby development. 

Leaving Wales behind was a decision based on what was best for Meg, one that led to her representing England at both sevens and fifteens within two years, but it didn’t change her Welsh-ness. “The thing is, I’ll always play with the same amount of pride no matter what badge is on my chest,” she assures us, “and I think to be honest that has come from being Welsh. At the beginning when I did come over to England, with the natural rivalry between England and Wales, I always had the thought of ‘don’t be too Welsh’. But now I’m the opposite; I want to show people that I am Welsh, and that I’ve got this beautiful heritage in the motherland, and I’m also English as well, my mum’s from Bristol. 

“It just came at a time when the opportunity was far greater for me in England, and weirdly in a team sport, you do have to do selfish things in order to get the best for the team. And I’ve fully contributed to that team, and I continue to do so with my heart on my sleeve.”

The decision paid off, as a twenty-year-old Meg was selected in the squad for England’s World Cup defence in 2017. After starting against Spain, then coming off the bench against USA and Italy, she was thrown in at the deep end in the semi-final against France. “Nolli [Waterman] got injured, she got concussed in like the first ten minutes. I was just buzzing to be on the bench, especially coming into that team, which was really established, and when she got concussed, they were like, ‘Jonesy, you’re on’.”

Slotting in at thirteen she had a stormer of a game, a last-gasp tackle preventing flanker Julie Annery from inciting a French revival before going over for a try, even if it came with England 13-3 up with the clock in the red.

The final, in which she was elevated to a starting shirt, went less smoothly, with Meg unable to get a foothold in the game as England fell to a 41-32 defeat. “I was saying to Scaz [Emily Scarratt] the other day, I had no clue that whole World Cup how we played the game,” she reflects. “I was a deer in headlights, I didn’t think, I just did. And that’s kind of been my motto for most of my career. I think you learn way more because you probably make way more mistakes, but own it as well.

“When you’re that young you’re not fully in the feel of things, you always think you’ve got another opportunity, that’s kind of where I was at. My path changed after that, going back into sevens, but that’s always been one of my dreams, to be part of a winning World Cup team, and now I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to do that.”

As Rugby Journal goes to print there are less than two hundred days to go until the Red Roses face the USA in the opening game of the Rugby World Cup at the Stadium of Light. It’s a defining year for all involved with the Red Roses, who’ve fallen at the final hurdle in the last two World Cup finals, but with a PWR season to finish and a Six Nations between now and then, it’s all about the here and now. “We had what we call a communication camp last week, anticipating the year ahead, and the quote was, ‘be where your feet are’, so not to get too far ahead of what’s happening,” explains Meg. “It’s about being present. When we do win, we’ve got to really enjoy those wins; when you’re a winning team, when you do have the expectation on you it’s difficult to know how to act sometimes.

“We want to be leading the way in how the women’s game is being played, we don’t want to be like, ‘you’re in this part of the pitch, you have to do this’. There’s flair and there’s synergy in this group, we’re amazing individuals but as a team we can create huge strides and be genuinely unstoppable.”

Life as a Red Rose is different for Meg – having been a Bristol, Wasps and Leicester Tigers player she’s long been used to the underdog status at club level, but at international level the Red Roses have lost just one game since 2019. “I love striving for a common goal, and when you’re an underdog it gives you adversity and it gives you a bit of firepower to kind of go, yeah, we’ve got nothing to lose,” says Meg. “When I flip to the Roses’ point of view, I actually do quite a lot less in terms of how I work on the pitch, but also it becomes more about how I am getting the best out of the person next to me. It’s the finer margins. Whenever I go to Roses, they do everything for me bar wipe my arse. My life is way easier in that environment, there’s nothing to do other than play the game.

“But, similarly with the Roses, we haven’t won a World Cup in eleven years. I was part of the 2017 World Cup, I’m really holding on to that and I want the story to end with a big trophy.”

Everything is set up in England’s favour, with recourses from home advantage to an extended build-up period thanks to a shortened PWR season, but it’s still not going to be an easy task. The Black Ferns are six-time champions and always turn up at World Cup time regardless of recent form; Canada gave the Red Roses a real scare at WXV and are ever progressing; and the likes of Australia are bringing their best players across from sevens.  “I don’t think people realise how hard sevens is,” says Meg, a staunch defender of sevens as a development tool. “On the women’s sevens series you are playing the best players in the entire world, fifteens doesn’t quite have that yet. You look at the Aussie girls who are coming over for the World Cup, Charlotte Caslick, Tia Hinds, Maddison and Teagan Levi; a lot of our forwards would never have come across these quick, agile, decision-making girls, and now they’re in the world where we’re number one, but they’re number one from a sevens capacity.”

Meg is not shy in voicing her desperation to win a World Cup, but the recent losses of both her parents have also given her some perspective. “The only way is up. They’re all life lessons. We were disappointed with the Olympics but Paris was actually a beautiful occasion, because it was one of my dad’s wishes to see me compete at the Games.

“Albeit my mum passing away, it’s just given me such a different perspective on things. People don’t know what other people are going through, you think you’ve got it all figured out until you get punched in the face. I do think what a privilege it is for me to have my mindset, to have this opportunity. My mum struggled to get out of bed, but what an amazing opportunity I’ve got to feel motivated to go out and run, to be paid for what I do. I think about my dad when I kick because of all the sessions he helped me with. 

“This year, I’m just genuinely going to be where my two feet are, and I’m just going to try and be. I’m not going to be a human doing, I’m going to be a human being.”

A rare character, one thing that’s for certain is that Meg will always be Meg. “There’s no other way I can be,” she says, “and I think people really value that. When someone’s really sure of themselves it radiates off them, and you find confidence in them as well. I hope the girls see that, and they can confide in me and they trust me as well.

“Sometimes you forget how much of a small speck the rugby world is. Rugby gives me a platform to be who I am, it’s given me the identity that I have, but the biggest thing it gives me is to be a good human. Whether I have a World Cup medal winning medal around my neck, or I don’t, that will always remain the same.” 

Story by James Price

Pictures by Ben McDade

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.