“I’ll just use my sleeve,” Meg Jones says softly as the tears slide down her face. The England centre tries to stem the flow of pain while I scuffle around in search of a tissue in one of my pockets. It takes a while but I finally dig out a stray sheet of kitchen towel.
Jones laughs, while still crying, as she accepts my scrunched-up offering and assurance that it is unused. She wipes her eyes and continues talking about the personal tragedies of the last year. Jones’s childhood was haunted by her mother’s alcoholism and then, between August and December, she lost both her parents – her Welsh dad, Simon, and then her English mum, Paula.
“Mum was a deep human but she could never articulate how she felt,” Jones says in her naturally husky voice which is now thickened by grief. “She said to me towards the end: ‘I need help,’ but she was always introverted. She had low self-esteem but she had been such a beautiful young woman. Then, as she got older, she wasn’t that beautiful any more.”
That repetition of “beautiful” cracks Jones open. My little old kitchen towel is sodden with tears but Jones nods emphatically when I ask if we should keep talking this way. “Yes, 100%,” she says. “It’s important to me.”
The women’s Six Nations begins this weekend and, a year ago, Jones was reeling from her father’s diagnosis. “It was 24 January 2024 and we were at home. Celia, my partner, my sister Abby and me were about to eat sushi. My dad came home with his partner from the hospital. He said: ‘I’ve got some shit news. I’ve got cancer, stage four.’”
Jones, who is 28, looks up. Her partner, Celia Quansah, was her Olympic sevens teammate at the Tokyo Games and their rugby success lit up her dad. “He had two last aims,” Jones says, “and one of them was to see me play sevens in the Paris Olympics and the other was to play snooker as long as he could. He loved Ronnie O’Sullivan.”
He didn’t make it to Paris but Jones smiles when I say he couldn’t have picked a better snooker hero. “Yeah, Ronnie’s a bit rough round the edges and so was my dad. He was a proper Cardiff boy.”
Despite the shattering news, Jones played brilliantly last year in the Six Nations, in which England won the grand slam. “It was the best rugby I’ve ever played because nothing is as bad as hearing that news. Nothing can make me sadder, or diminish my value more than losing my dad, one of my best mates and the rock of our family. All through the Six Nations my dad kept saying: ‘You played out of your skin, Megs.’ He went to the Bristol game, Wales v England. He was a proud Welshman but he supported me. I had a good game and he was buzzing.”
When did she last talk to her dad? “In July, in his garage. He was a plumber and he was telling me how much the copper pipe had cost and whether he should take it to the scrap yard. We were crying.”
Her dad wanted her to go to a music festival in Budapest soon afterwards and it was then that she heard the final news. “Stormzy had just finished and I was having a good time with a few beers when my sister rang and said: ‘He’s gone, Meg.’ He died peacefully at home. Abby sat beside him on the bed and said: ‘I love you so much, Dad.’ He said: ‘I love you too, Abs. OK, you’re boring the fuck out of me now.’ That’s what he always used to say on the phone. If he was fed up he’d say: ‘You’re boring the fuck out of me now. Bye-bye.’”
Jones laughs, her drying face creasing with delight. “The fact those were his last words was perfect. It was him to a T and he then took his last deep breath and passed.”
Four days later she joined the England camp in preparation for the WXV tournament in Canada. John Mitchell, the head coach, and a few of her friends knew what had happened but the rest of the squad were oblivious. When she left soon afterwards, having badly injured her ankle, they thought Jones was crying because she was out of the tournament. She was dealing with something far more searing.
“My mum didn’t go to my dad’s funeral and I called her a bitch. It wasn’t right to say that because she was ill. But I was angry about losing my dad and that she wasn’t there to look after us. His death triggered her massively and she got anxious about seeing the family.”
Her parents had split up, after years of trauma in Cardiff, when Jones was 17. “I used to hear them arguing and the next morning she’d be like: ‘Cup of tea, love?’ My dad would say: ‘Are you joking? You’ve been binge-drinking the last two weeks.’ She’d say: ‘I know. Sorry.’
“My dad didn’t realise that me, my brother and sister could hear everything. When I told him he thought: ‘I need to protect my kids.’ He made a really tough decision to basically kick my mum out and she ended up with my gran … I just feel sad for her because she had been so intelligent. We used to watch Catchphrase and Tipping Point and she answered all the questions.”
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She describes her mum as “a woman of science” because she was a senior nurse for almost 40 years. “Mum worked on the neuro ward. She had a big crash when she was 11 and hit her head and had brain surgery. It was one of her motivating factors to get into such work.”
Jones pauses before adding: “I always thought how ironic it was that she was looking after people with brain damage on crazy long shifts and then coming home and not looking after herself. She could run that ward blindfolded but at home she was a mess. Mum would go three weeks drinking heavily and then have four weeks completely sober. Wouldn’t touch a drop. Then she’d start again.”
After surgery on her ankle, Jones went to her mum with her foot in a boot, and her heart in a cage. She would not allow herself to grieve. “All I focused on was: ‘Fix my mum, fix my mum.’ She was incontinent and so I was bathing her, making sure she was clean and fed. There was still hope I could save her. Mum felt it, too. She’d say: ‘There’s always hope, Megs.’ But part of her brain also said: ‘Alcohol will fix me.’”
Jones began talking to The Living Room, a charity to help those affected by alcohol and drug abuse. “Wyn [Ellis Owen], their founder and former CEO, is remarkable. He is a 76-year-old alcoholic who has been in recovery for 35 years and he helped me so much. My mum agreed to meet him on 7 December, but she passed away two days earlier. Before she died she rang Wyn to say: ‘I can’t make it, I’ve been drinking.’”
Guilt sometimes rises up, needlessly but understandably, in Jones as she gives me a timeline. “In mid-October I’d done two weeks with her and we were going out for coffee, walks, dinner and she wasn’t drinking. Two weeks clean. She’d gone past the shakes and was going to AA meetings. Her sister came from Poland to stay with her.
“I went back to my own life but it was stupid. I left [the Italian liqueur] Disaronno in the fridge. She was at home and just thought: ‘Fuck it. This will fix me.’ She was sad because she was thinking about the love of her life, my dad, and how sad we were. We should have poured that bottle of Disaronno down the drain with all the other alcohol. That was the one that got her drinking again.”
The last days were desperate. “I said to the paramedics: ‘Can you not take her?’ They said they couldn’t if she refused and was still functioning. I pleaded with them, crying, and said: ‘Mum, go to the hospital, let them detox you properly. We can start afresh.’ But she was such a proud woman who didn’t want to go to the hospital where she had worked so long.”
Jones clutches the shredded kitchen towel tightly. “Perhaps I didn’t push Welfare enough and insist she be sectioned. She was doubly incontinent, couldn’t get up, living on her own. I said: ‘Can someone help me?’”
Paula could not be saved and Meg, her youngest daughter, is now benefiting from counselling while she has returned to rugby with renewed purpose. In a World Cup year, with England hosting the tournament, Jones has a chance to play a key role in bringing women’s rugby to mainstream attention.
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Having chosen to play for England, she made her debut in 2015 when she was 18. England are now the dominant team in women’s rugby and have lost only once in 51 games – the 2022 World Cup final against New Zealand which Jones missed as she was playing sevens.
Jones is now one of England’s two vice-captains and her empathy and emotional intelligence are defining features of her leadership: “Vulnerability is really important. It allows you to connect and the biggest thing for me is to inspire and also be inspired.”
After facing Italy at home on Sunday, England travel to Cardiff to play Wales the following Saturday. How will Jones control her emotions returning to Wales as memories of her parents pulse through her? “Breathing is a big factor and I really want to be in the present. It’s going to be a trigger – but I just hope it’s in a positive way. I know my dad would have been there. My mum too. So I’m going to relish it.”
It will be the day before Mother’s Day and Jones nods. “Another trigger. With grieving we speak about the firsts – first Father’s Day, first birthday, first Christmas. They’re all triggers. But they’re also times you can reflect on the good days and your memories. I’ll be thinking so much of Mum and Dad, and all they meant to me.”
There has been more death in her family: “My gran, my mum’s mum, passed away three weeks ago. She was 95. She went to the funeral of my mum but my gran was a hard woman, didn’t show much emotion. We’d speak about it and she’d have a tear in her eye and her next breath would be: ‘Cup of tea?’”
Jones talks about becoming a patron for the Living Room and starting a family of her own with Celia. Hope and light pour out of her. “I’ve delved deep into love and compassion and that’s changed my outlook. I know how important it is to tell people you love them, you’re there for them. I look through texts with my mum now and I constantly said: ‘We love you, Mum, and I want to help you.’ I continuously said that because I didn’t want her to feel judged. I wanted her to see the love around her. That’s all you can do.”