Meg Jones

Full transcript

Home Again – Interview with Meg Jones

Introduction

Meg Jones: Yes, it's about winning. Yes, it's about being really competitive and being the best player you could possibly be. But also, at the end of the day, humans just wanna connect. And for me and all those other girls, that's the way we felt that we can connect and find purpose in this world is through the game of rugby.

Ella: Hi, I'm Ella.

Matt: And I'm Matt.

Ella: And you're listening to Home Again, a podcast by SpareRoom about the places we live.

Matt: We ask our guests to pick three homes and tell us how they've shaped their lives.

Ella: And who's our guest today, Matt?

Matt: Meg Jones, MBE, captain of the England women's rugby team, World Cup winner, Six Nations winner, and an Olympian.

Ella: I actually found out today that they're the only rugby team, men or women, to win a World Cup and a Six Nations back to back.

Matt: That's pretty cool.

Ella: And I'm also super excited to get to speak to Meg because she is born and bred in Cardiff. She's got a really strong Welsh accent, but she obviously plays for England.

Similarly, I'm Welsh, I live in England, so I'm really intrigued to talk to her about this sort of dual nationality and how she feels about playing for the England team.

Matt: Yeah, and I've read some interviews and listened to some other bits from Meg, and there's just so many directions this conversation could go, and I'm just really excited for it. It's gonna be great.

Ella: Looking forward.

Matt: Meg, welcome to Home Again. It's a delight to have you here.

Meg Jones: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. I feel honoured.

Matt: Really looking forward to this one. And we're gonna start with a couple of quickfire questions, find out a couple of little home truths. I don't know what's on this one. Oh, morning or night person?

Meg Jones: Morning. My fiancée, Celia, she's a night person. She stays up till, like, 2:00 AM on Pinterest, and I'm up in the morning feeding the dog, ready for my coffee. I actually look forward to those coffee mornings, yeah.

Ella: Home alone guilty pleasure?

Meg Jones: When Celia's not in, I always put on a zombie film. So yeah, weird. I have this... I don't know, I feel like I wanna be part of an apocalypse. Probably don't wanna say that, do I? But I just feel like I would survive, and I would be well-equipped because I've watched all the zombie films known to man. So yeah, that is my guilty pleasure, watching zombie films.

Matt: Have you got a bunker full of canned goods just in case?

Meg Jones: Well, yeah, exactly, just underneath the floorboards, everything. Got a shelter in the back, like an Anderson shelter. So no, I don't know, I just like the thrill of it, I think. It gives me a little bit of adrenaline buzz.

I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I think I chase the adrenaline as much as I can. So yeah, massive guilty pleasure.

Matt: What is the chore you put off the most at home?

Meg Jones: Hanging washing out.

Matt: Really quick answer there.

Meg Jones: Yeah, really quick answer.

Ella: Immediate.

Meg Jones: Yeah, I don't mind putting it on. Obviously, that's the easy bit. Putting the Lenor balls in... I put two pods in. Smells delightful. Put it on spin, happy for it to finish, then put it on another spin cycle. Hanging it up? Phew, cannot think of anything worse. But me and Celia hate it, so we always... You know, it's one of those where you go, "Right, I need to do this," 'cause you have to, otherwise your clothes are gonna smell damp.

So we end up doing it together sometimes. But we also got this massive air dryer, the one that you plug in that heats up. Oh, that's so good. Huge. No need for it in my little small flat in London, but you just feel like, yeah. And it's got this hanging sock thing as well. I don't know, it's such an adult thing to have, isn't it?

But yeah, that's my least favourite. Don't mind dishes, all that.

Matt: I don't think you're on your own with that one.

Meg Jones: No, yeah. Do you know what? It just comes out messier than you put it in. I don't know.

Ella: It's the same with putting it away.

Meg Jones: Oh, I know, that as well. That's top tier.

Ella: I don't wanna do the folding and the whole thing of hanging it up.

Meg Jones: I wish I could change my answer, but that is... Can that be part of it?

Ella: Yeah, it can be a two-in-one.

Matt: And then you know you've got to do it all again next week.

Meg Jones: I know. Next week? A couple days. The amount we go through with sports kit, it's just chaos, particularly when we're both training. I'm like, it's never-ending.

Ella: Okay, and then the final one: Host or guest?

Meg Jones: Host. Yeah, definitely host. I'm the entertainer. Celia's got all the extravagant ideas, but yeah, I love hosting, love having people in my space. I'm one of those people that wants everyone having a good time, so I'll do whatever I can to make sure everyone's having a good time.

Don't get me wrong, I'll sit down and, you know, help yourself. My house is your house. But yeah, definitely host. Don't mind being a guest, but sometimes you don't know what the boundaries are. Not your good mates, but if you're a guest somewhere, you've gotta test the waters a little bit, whereas if you come to my house, I expect you to raid the fridge, steal my clothes, just do whatever you need to do to feel at home.

So yeah, definitely host.

Home 1

Matt: So let's chat about the three homes you've chosen today. What's the first place you picked?

Meg Jones: I picked Cardiff, where I was born and bred, so just my home in Cardiff. Still got the house now. But I just felt... I don't know. I always reflect on my childhood, and I just feel grateful for what I had, which is such an important part of my life, like most people growing up.

We had a lot of free rein. My mum was a nurse. She worked a lot of night shifts, and my dad was a pipefitter/welder/plumber who was self-employed at times. So we had a very working-class family. It was me, my brother, and sister. Brother's the eldest by four years, and then my sister's the middle child, and then I was the youngest.

So yeah, we were just... It was very much the childhood of get out and about, do as much as you can, text me where you are, or let me know where you are. 0800 REVERSE, you know that call, ring them back so you didn't have to spend any money on your pay-as-you-go, and basically say "I'm here" or "I'm just at the park with the girls" with that three seconds that you had to let them know you were all good, and then make sure you were home by the time the streetlights came on. It was as simple as that.

And then also we had everything we possibly needed. We had gifts at birthdays, Christmas, and we also had a home full of love. Every time we left: "I love you. I love you massive." We never left saying that we didn't love each other, which, growing up, you think that's normal, but actually you speak to a lot of people and it's not very common in households to be saying I love you quite frequently, and I guess maybe it's quite vulnerable as well.

But on the other breath, we also had a lot of adversity growing up with my mum and dad. We suppressed a lot of emotions, we never addressed issues fully, and it was a lot of sweeping under the carpet. So again, I always think back, and I was quite an angry child. Didn't deal with conflict very well. The thing I wanted to do was hit something. That was the first thing I wanted to do: hit something or shout and scream and then run away. Which is not an ideal way of dealing with conflict when you grow up. Can't start doing that in the middle of a meeting.

That was probably one of the things that I had to learn, and I did that through sport, where obviously I put all that anger. I wasn't angry at anything per se; the house we lived in, my dad was quite black and white growing up. He turned grey by the end, as in he realised that the world isn't black and white. And my mum was struggling with alcohol dependency as well, probably when I was about 12 at that time.

So a lot of our emotions were swept under the carpet, and it was kind of like, "Right, we're annoyed and angry this day” - but tomorrow morning - “Do you want a cup of tea? All right, we'll move on." There was no addressing the issues again and trying to resolve. So I think that's where a lot of my anger and frustration came from, because I couldn't articulate how I felt, and I couldn't pinpoint or quite grasp why I was feeling angry, even if I lost a game of Monopoly or whatever. But it's built-up suppression of whatever was happening at home.

Cardiff is where it shaped me, and I love being from Wales. I love the fact that we have this natural sense of community. When we meet another Welsh person, you just know there's like this vibe, and you just get along. You kind of have this Celtic nature of like, we're a small nation and we've probably fought the big people quite a lot, and there's probably a little bit of a chip on our shoulder like, "This is why we unite as a team."

Cardiff is where I solidified a lot of my beliefs. It made me who I was. I thought love and compassion and kindness were all things that were important growing up or when I reflect back, and then also how important community and family were. “Blood is thicker than water”, all these mantras that we had coming out of the house.

Playing rugby, I played rugby from the age of six and I was the only girl going into an all-boys, male-dominated sport. Mind you, my dad did shave my head. I had nits, so he did shave all my head 'cause, as you know, a lot of Welshmen don't like putting their hand in their pockets to spend money, particularly on nit cream. Well, if you have no hair, you can't have nits, can you?

Ella: I remember my mum threatening me multiple times that she was gonna shave my head, and I would just cry.

Meg Jones: Yeah. No, I was like, "Go on then." And then he did it. But yeah, I can imagine the amount of people... It's so expensive as well, and you're guaranteed to have them as well 'cause you're in school with everyone. I had this thick hair anyway, so I think they loved being in there. Probably dirty as well actually, so they probably loved it twice the amount 'cause I was running around all the time.

So yeah, I was in a very community-driven club with the boys in Ely, in Cardiff, which is actually a low socio-economic area. A lot of the boys... I'm not from Ely, I'm from Heath, but my dad met a mate through work, and he said, "Bring your son down." So my brother went down, and then I was like, "Dad, I wanna go." And he was like, "No way. Not my little girl." Anyway, he did end up taking me.

These years at Glamorgan Wanderers in Ely solidified a lot of my core beliefs, which were love, community, looking out for each other. A lot of those kids had single-parent homes. A lot of them couldn't afford the subs, which were £1 a week. And everyone used to chip in and help each other, you know? It was no skin off anyone's back, and they would literally bend over backwards for people to have a good time, host, and make sure that everyone felt welcomed.

And those are the beliefs that I fully feel that I embody now in my day-to-day life as a professional rugby player.

Matt: And there's so many threads in there to talk about. But just on a personal level, I love the way you talk about black and white and grey, but talking about a house that had difficulty in it, but also love. 'Cause it's easy to look back on your childhood as you become an adult and go, "I thought that was normal," and now it turned out it wasn't compared to everybody else's experience.

I look back, I had a really difficult relationship with my dad. And a lot of what I love about me comes from my dad, and it took me a long time to settle those two and go, "Do you know what? I still have all that, and that was all great. This, not so much." It's lovely to hear you talk about that balance, 'cause it's really important, I think.

Meg Jones: Well, I think we struggle as humans to live in paradoxes, in the sense of happiness and sadness can coexist, or grief and joy can coexist. And I think we struggle. We're always told, "Right, have a happy life." How are you gonna have a happy life? "Oh, I'm just gonna be happy." You can't. It's merely impossible to go through life without feeling anxiety, being sad, excitement, happiness, all the emotions that you feel, and we struggle to give ourselves permission to do that.

I only realised that through having a parent who was dependent on alcohol, an addict, and working closely with The Living Room, which is a charity I work with and I'm a patron of. They work with all types of addiction, but their main message is being perfectly imperfect and giving yourself the permission to be human, and loving warts and all, basically. Until you do that, it's so hard to have this happy life.

We try and fight against the bad stuff, 'cause “I don't wanna feel that”. We wanna suppress it, sweep it under the carpet. But then, as you see as a child, you struggle to articulate the way you feel, then you struggle to have relationships and conflict, and all these other separation anxiety or any forms of attachment issues then begin to come into it. They then carry resentment, and they're like, "Oh, well, I had a really tough childhood and poor me, I really struggled growing up."

Why don't we see it for what we were given - all the good stuff that was there - and then also try and learn from the stuff that maybe wasn't so good for us? In a weird way, my mum being an addict allowed me to have greater empathy, because I then had to lead with compassion and empathy, because you can't change someone. You can't change anyone, really. All you can do is show love and compassion, and that's all humans want, is to feel this connection, and we wanna feel loved.

You will never be able to get the love that you want from anyone else. You can only get it from yourself. But to do that, you need to understand it as well, so you need to understand how to give it.

It's a weird way of looking at it, but without having my mum go through those struggles, I don't think I'd be able to really compartmentalise or have the thought process, drive, and narrative that I do without experiencing that. Like most sportspeople or people that achieve a lot, high achievers go through some sort of adversity, and it either makes you or breaks you, doesn't it?

I definitely tried to make it like you did with your dad. You obviously saw the positive stuff, and you wanted to embody those things, and I think that's such a nice way of looking at it.

Matt: And we both watched the England Meet England documentary over the last couple of days, and it's exactly what you say in sport: that thing of it's only the loss as the background and the starting point of that story leading you to the big moment. The ending wouldn't have been the ending without the journey. That's what makes that such a powerful watch, isn't it?

Ella: I actually got really emotional watching it, which I didn't expect. For one, I'm not hugely into sport, so I didn't think it would resonate with me. But it was particularly when you were playing Samoa, and seeing the women from the other team who maybe weren't from such a privileged position, and they were having to make compromises with their families and their lives to be there. And also players on the team talking about their struggles from home or, to an extent with you, with this dual nationality sort of thing happening. I thought it was really amazing.

Meg Jones: I think that's the beauty of sport. You see so many different journeys, and you connect based on this one premise of: we just all enjoy playing this game. But Samoans particularly, their values and beliefs that they have, being family-orientated and doing their island proud - it almost puts things into perspective.

Yes, it's about winning. Yes, it's about being really competitive and being the best player you could possibly be. But also, at the end of the day, like I said, humans just wanna connect. And for me and all those other girls, that's the way we felt that we can connect and find purpose in this world, is through the game of rugby. It's allowed us to do that on so many levels, and there's so many unique journeys and characters in the game, which I love 'cause I actually think we celebrate those characters really well in the game.

I hope people can see us as accessible and relatable because you look at some of the footballers and you can't even touch them. You don't even know what they kind of look like. But as Red Roses anyway, we've always had this mantra of wanting to be relatable and accessible, and we stay out hours after the game to try and connect with as many fans as possible. 'Cause we never had those role models growing up from a rugby point of view, 'cause it was a male-dominated sport. The only role models I had that were female were my mum and my gran, really. Those were two powerful women in my life.

So yeah, it's always lovely to see such amazing characters, and also how powerful the game can be on so many levels. 'Cause they scored three points against us as well, so they went for conversions and they celebrated it like it was a World Cup final. And to be fair, we all just went, "Fair enough." Like, have the points almost, 'cause it meant a lot to them, and going home, that player who would've got the three points would be making her family proud on so many levels.

Ella: And you know, it's amazing - you were talking about your first team that you were with and having that sort of community where you'd all help each other out because it was an area where people couldn't afford to do that. And that has carried even now that you're top of your game, basically, and it's still having that same environment. That's really amazing that both ends of the scale that can still be true.

Meg Jones: And I think that's what I've always embodied as a player. I'm very team-first. I always want the team to do well, and I want individuals to do well, 'cause I know if that happens, then the team will be firing. It doesn't bother me if I have a bad game, as long as we win. I can have an absolute shambles of a game and it would not affect my mood - maybe slightly, but I would never prolong it. I'm really good at allowing results never to define me.

I've lost more games than I've ever won, and one person's opinion doesn't lower my worth. Because at the end of the day, if you're sat at a table that wants you, you'll know you're welcomed. If you're not, then move tables, basically. I'm a firm believer in that, 'cause I think if you're a good person, most people will accept you into their home.

Home 2

Matt: I think that's a really interesting point to talk about your second home that you've chosen, 'cause that was a move away from the community you knew into a new setup at a relatively young age compared to a lot of people moving away from home. So tell us about the second place you picked.

Meg Jones: Yeah, so when I was 16, I made the decision quite early on, speaking to my dad as well, who's a proud Welshman - my mum's from Bristol, so I was able to play for Wales or England, basically. And I had to make a decision who I wanted to play for. England had a bit more of a well-established setup, whereas Wales just didn't look as shiny to me, basically. Let's be real, as a 13 or 14-year-old, what looks better? The England team looks better. That was it.

I had nothing based on anything; I hadn't been in the pathway. They weren't getting paid, they weren't professional - they were only turning professional in 2014. So I made the decision quite early on, and Hartpury College, which was in Gloucester, was basically an academy where, as females - and as the men's team - you could study alongside basically being a professional rugby player.

You wake up at 6:00 AM, you go to your training, you then go at 7:00 or 8:00 to your first lecture, you then come back down for skills at 11:00, do your gym, then go back up to your lectures. It was during A-levels, so I was doing my A-levels whilst playing rugby, but ultimately I was there to play rugby. I think I came out with two and a half A-levels by the end of it, but a professional contract, so it didn't kind of matter.

This was the first time I ever felt fully accepted for who I was as a person, because before that, growing up in school, I was very conscious of being too masculine, or presenting too masculine. I used to get called names, but again, I guess it did phase me, but I was quite a popular kid anyway, so it never isolated me. But I was always called a man or a lesbian. Funny enough, turned out to be a lesbian, so maybe they just knew more than I did.

All these things were trying to be negative connotations against me, so I really tried to push my femininity between Year 7 and Year 10. I really tried to be this girly girl, and I just never felt fully like Meg. So it wasn't until I came to Gloucester Hartpury College at the age of 16 and met all these girls, all these women - I say girls, we were 16 - that had the same vibe as me. We were all passionate about being women in sport, we were all different 'cause we were in a male-dominated sport, we had the same boundaries and limits, and we were also very driven to wanting to play for our nation, whether that was England, Wales, Scotland, whatever.

We were all driven. We all went there for a purpose, and that was to be the best rugby player. And you get scouted as well, so there's a bit of like, "Yeah, I feel good that I've been selected for this." So yeah, I met a group of girls where we all had the same beliefs and values, basically. It was just the time of my life. We're still friends now. There was 11 of us from that cohort that probably still stay in touch, and the majority of us play for the Red Roses: Zoe Aldcroft, Zoe Stratford, Sarah Bern, Kelly Smith, Tatyana Heard, Mo Hunt - she wasn't in my cohort, but she was there - Alex Matthews. At one point our backline was pretty much Hartpury College, bar one or two girls.

Living away from home at the age of 16 as well, it's kind of that uni essence, but a lot younger. Sneaking out, jumping in taxis, going out with £5 and coming back with £10. It was just chaos. Rugby girls had a bit of a reputation as well: naughty girls, girls that are a bit rough around the edges, but also able to hold a conversation with another 16-year-old boy because all you spoke about was rugby. Whereas other boys or girls probably didn't get on with the boys 'cause they had nothing to speak about. What do you speak about at the age of 16? Who knows?

So yeah, we were very popular around campus, and it was always a bit of a joke when the rugby girls were coming, 'cause we always had shorts on 24/7, whether it was rain, snow, or sunshine, 'cause we were dashing to the next training session. And we were always in groups—there was always at least four or five of us in groups.

Again, that community feel: we always backed each other up, looked after each other, resolved situations as quick as we could, and we also had a very good time. So that time of my life I always look back on fondly. Learnt so much as well: how to cook, how to get away with stuff, how to maneuver life a little bit.

But I also fully felt like I could be Meg, and present a little bit more masculine. I always struggled coming back to Cardiff 'cause everyone knew me as Meg from Years 7 to 10, so I always suppressed that side of me of being this masculine, boisterous person. But now it's something that I encompass literally every day. It's my personality: being boisterous, presenting masculine, looking like a skater boy, but never actually riding a skateboard in my entire life.

I also learned a lot of values: authenticity, courage, and humour are my three values, and I learned them in that time because we were able to have psychologist meetings, nutritionist talks, mentorships. We were really looked after, and it was encouraged to try and be a better person. It's almost like therapy being in sport, because you have these natural urges of wanting to be better for your team as well.

You do learn a lot, and you learn quickly, because there's 20 or 25 other people holding you accountable for what you've said and done, and expecting an action from it. So people are expecting you to get better naturally anyway. That's what I've always loved about the game: you always get better, and you're always held to account whether you like it or not.

Obviously a natural defence mechanism for me is to be angry, but I've learned not to be, because you have to assume positive intent, and you have to assume people are coming from a place of heart. But that's something I've had to work on - that's my own issue. And now being a leader amongst that, you have to empathise, and you have to realise that people don't think the same as you as well.

So yeah, I think that was such an important part of my years, and I'll always be grateful for what it gave me, and also grateful that my mum and dad were able to put me into that position, 'cause it was basically boarding school. You paid X amount to be away from home. Very grateful that they were in a position to do that as well.

Ella: Going back to what you were saying about feeling like you could lean into your identity and feeling more accepted, it was something that I thought while watching the documentary. You're playing in a male-dominated sport, and it's only been more recently that the women are getting the recognition that they deserve. Something that's kind of sad about men's sports is that they are confined by this patriarchal idea of what a man should be like, and it's holding them there.

But then you've got women like yourself coming up who are leaning into doing something more masculine and boisterous, but actually also being very feminine and being a woman. I just wondered whether you thought that was true - that you can sort of lean into that more?

Meg Jones: Oh, 100%. It's a classic: if you play rugby, you're a lesbian. These are classic stereotypical remarks, and we have come a long way. You look at our team: we're 50% straight, 50% gay, so we all kind of joke about it.

I always think everyone's a little bit gay - this is my theory - but they just haven't had the opportunity to be it or express it. But that Hartpury time, being away from home and being with a group of girls, allowed me to give myself permission just to be myself and lean into these back-subconscious thoughts that I had that yeah, I did like girls and I wanted to explore that, but I didn't have the environment to do it.

Celia's my partner now, and she's a girly girl - a really girly girl. But we share so many similar values, and we carry no judgment against each other, which I think is really important. I feel like I wouldn't have been able to be in a healthy relationship if I wasn't able to have the permission to lean into the masculinity, the femininity, and being myself within the realms of a rugby world. Those times were important because they allowed me to be me, which then meant I was able to find a healthy relationship and maneuver through life by building relationships.

Ella: It's so important not only to have female role models in sport, but also seeing gay role models in sport. And you recently got engaged.

Meg Jones: Yes!

Ella: Congratulations!

Meg Jones: Thank you.

Ella: And you share a lot of your relationship online and speak about your partner, and that's really amazing, because even now we still don't see that enough.

Meg Jones: Oh, you should see my algorithm - I see plenty of it! But it was interesting actually, 'cause we got together just before COVID, around 2019, and then COVID hit and we ended up moving in together pretty much straight away. We only lived around the corner anyway, but just to make it easier.

After COVID, I think we posted on Instagram maybe a photo of me kissing Celia on the cheek, and then we had this influx of likes, comments, and shares, all positive, about how amazing it was. And we were like, "Weird. Why do people feel the need to comment on how nice that is?" But I think people do love love anyway.

It was very much like, "Oh, thank you so much for showing me this, you've really helped my daughter." And then we had The Telegraph come over taking photos, and we ended up having a photo shoot as this gay couple. Me and Celia were like, "Why are people wanting to take photos?" But we never struggled having to be gay or coming out as a lesbian, so we never fully saw the impact of having to show the visibility of it.

Whereas now I do, 'cause I speak to some girls now and they're in their 30s-odd and still struggling with their sexuality. So it is really important to normalise it, because you don't see it often. And to have role models or high achievers that are doing so well, and oh, they are lesbian as well... It's so irrelevant, but years ago people saw it as a deterrent or something that made you not a high achiever, or that you looked a certain way. Celia presents very feminine; I'm a bit more masculine, but long hair and what have you. But people go, "Oh wow, you're really pretty for a lesbian," or all these stereotypical comments that you get.

So it is really important for us. My angle has always been: well, why can't I post about it on Instagram when a heterosexual couple do the exact same? Growing up, all I ever knew was heterosexual couples - Disney films, watching any sort of love tale or fairy tale was about a man and a woman. I'm part of a very feminist group, obviously, with rugby girls, and we all say, "Well, growing up I had heterosexuals rammed down my throat, so why can't I ram being in a gay couple down other people's throats?"

So we have a little bit of humour in there, but it is important. And I know the impact it does have, because even kissing Celia after a game when there are young girls there, I had a message from a mum basically saying, "Thank you for showing my daughter how easy and effortless it can be to love someone that you love, regardless of gender."

That was another reminder for me of how important it is to showcase my love for Celia, but it comes with another message and angle that allows people to feel comfortable. So yeah, I'll do anything I possibly can for people to feel comfortable, and if that means showing how open I am and stepping into my world a little bit, then so be it.

Matt: Watching sport for several decades, in the men's side of both rugby and football, statistically it seems impossible that there are so few gay players visible to the public. But you go to women's sport - and I've taken my son to a lot of women's football, which he loves - and not only on the pitch, but in the audience and the crowd, there's diversity and just this totally different sense that everybody is welcome, everybody is included, and you can be whoever you are. Which still doesn't feel to be the case with men's team sport.

Meg Jones: It's tough, isn't it? I don't know the answer to that. My angle is that I think masculinity is celebrated more than femininity. I think it is changing, but with masculine traits, I sometimes feel I get addressed differently to Celia because I present masculine.

I think that's probably the same in the men's game: there's this toxic masculinity and this boisterous mantra of not opening up and feeling vulnerable. But there are some cases slowly creeping in where people are coming out and feeling open to do so. I'll sit with a lot of the rugby boys and they'll say, "Oh, I'd love people just to open up." But the environment itself, I think, is too laddy. There's a lot of banter and a lot of stuff thrown around flamboyantly.

So yeah, I don't know, it's really tough. I struggle with it, 'cause they say one in 10 men are gay. If there's 23 on the pitch, it's guaranteed two of them are gay, but they've all got wives and kids. But it's hard to say, and you can never put pressure on that situation. It's their journey and their thing to say when they feel comfortable. Maybe it comes out later in their lives, and I hope we can create an environment and a world where people do feel comfortable just to be themselves and express their sexuality as much as they like without feeling threatened.

Sometimes I don't like holding Celia's hand down the street because I don't want eyes on me, or I don't want people making comments or unnecessary attention. So I always have that subconscious thought in me as well. You have to be careful where you go on holiday, Googling "Is Greece a safe place for gay people?" You do, 'cause you don't know the sort of world that's out there outside of your world, and that's why you stay close in your world, 'cause you feel safe and don't feel like you need to explore anywhere else.

Home 3

Matt: Well, it feels like there's so many things we could continue talking about, but we need to talk about your third home. I feel like we've segued into that anyway talking about your engagement and moving in together.

Meg Jones: Yeah, so London was the third home. I've kind of lived in Greater London really from the age of 19 or 20, so for nine or ten years. After Hartpury, after being in Gloucester, I got my first professional contract at the age of 17. I actually got injured and ended up going to Loughborough Uni, but I was only there for a year.

Then I started doing a remote university - I didn't end up going. There was no such thing as remote then 'cause COVID wasn't around. So I ended up moving down to Bisham Abbey in Marlow. Not quite London, but close enough.

Those years there, being with the Red Roses and being at Wasps for a couple of years over in Ealing or Acton... Celia, my partner, is also from Twickenham, so she's around that way. They were the years that I found my new home in the sense of her family, which is now my family, being part of the England setup, being surrounded by Twickenham Stadium, and meeting a great group of girls at Wasps.

It now feels like my new home, 'cause even when I go back to Cardiff... I sadly lost my mum and dad in 2024, so it's just my brother and sister, and my dad's partner there with a couple of friends. They've moved away from home. So London has become my new home with Celia's huge family, who have looked after me in those tough times.

We're still young, and we're still going out and about, and everything feels close together, whether that's work opportunities or hanging out with mates, 'cause people always tend to pass through London. No one really passes through Loughborough!

We love hosting, having people around for barbecues, having a few drinks, or coming to stay for the night where we fold the towel nicely and put it on the bed to make them feel like they're at an Airbnb. I feel like it's my new home, and it's where Celia grew up, and we're close to all her family. There's nothing really remarkable about it other than the fact that it just feels like a part of me now. And through the tough times of losing both mum and dad, that was where I felt the safest, because I was around Celia and her family. And my friends were able to drop by when they liked. So that's probably why I picked London, and it's also my current home.

Ella: It's funny, because you speak about Cardiff with such love and compassion, and you've said that that is your first home. And how quickly now somewhere like London, which is so vastly different in terms of vibe and the people around you, can suddenly be the place that you refer to as home.

Meg Jones: Oh yeah. I always say I can have the best night in Wetherspoons; all that matters is who is there. Celia likes quite bougie things - she's quite aesthetic and likes the finer detail in things. Me, I could have a cold pint on a Thursday night - a curry and a pint for £7.50 in Wetherspoons, as long as the company's good.

I think that is true for most people, to be fair. Whoever you're surrounded by and your environment is really important to us, because that's how we connect and feel safe. Human connection is probably the most important thing over your location. People are your home, I guess.

Matt: As a sportsperson, you play for a team, but your team might change. You play for your country, but different people come in and out. How important is the ability to create a family unit within that to success? If you lot can become a unit, that's sort of half the job in a way.

Meg Jones: Yeah, and you move clubs quite quickly as well, or you never know what's gonna happen. So you learn how to build relationships quite fast, and you learn how important culture and team ethos are. It's very second nature to me having those team ethos values.

We always say: start with the end in mind. What is it that we're trying to achieve? Let's work back from there, and then let's hang our hat on core values that drive us and keep us aligned in navigating to the end goal. You have core beliefs and behaviours that you always wanna fall back on and hold yourself accountable to, because particularly in sport, integrity is really important. Having high integrity when people aren't watching: what are you doing behind closed doors? Something I value myself on is high integrity.

As a sporting unit, it's very important to set out what we're trying to achieve, and then set out three or four values that are important to the group and what that looks like from a behavioural point of view. Culture is probably the thing addressed last in most teams I go into, including the Red Roses, 'cause people think culture will just happen or be figured out. It's easy when you're winning to have good culture, but when your back's up against the wall, who's looking out for me? If you don't have culture, that's when you know something is wrong or it's not as strong as you thought.

I learned a lot on my values from the teams that I lost the most with. I was with Leicester Tigers for a season and we won maybe four games the whole season out of 20 games. It's not a very good winning ratio, but you learn how to have good conversations and how important honesty is.

In the Red Roses in particular, even after winning the World Cup, if you can't have honest conversations about your culture and what could have happened if we didn't win, you're probably in a bad environment. A couple of months after the World Cup final, we sat down and said, "If we didn't win, what would we have said went wrong?" We were pointing out things that weren't good enough, even though we still won. Certain training sessions or things we didn't address, we said if we addressed them, we would have been in a better place.

You only truly know the strength of those foundations when your back's up against the wall, or you're losing, or you're not in as confident a position as you thought you were gonna be in. So culture and community are really valuable within anything: family, teams, sport. It allows you to build good relationships and find those connections that you want.

Ella: We normally like to round off the episode by asking someone what home means to them, but you've tied that up really nicely. It sounds like it's not only the people, but the community you build, and how you're able to celebrate each other, acknowledge your differences, and acknowledge your strengths.

I think that's really beautiful. Thank you so much. You've been so open, honest, and wonderful in this conversation, and you've been a really fab guest.

Meg Jones: Thank you very much, it's been great. Thank you both.

Ending

Ella: Don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I think that might be my favourite episode that we've done so far.

Matt: You are absolutely allowed to say that. I think we were all really looking forward to this one. There was just a general sense of excitement, and I feel like we could do that again 11 times and get 11 more completely different, equally fascinating conversations.

Ella: I could have carried on speaking to her for hours. There was so much in there, and I didn't want to interrupt her. I could have just listened to her talk. I was forgetting we were interviewing her at parts; I was just so interested in what she had to say.

Matt: Just so many threads you can pull on and so many different directions it could have gone, and things that I or you would have related to. What a lovely, warm, open spirit she's got.

Ella: Yeah, and she has this amazing ability to be able to talk about really heavy and complex subjects, but also turn it into a positive or a silver lining, or speak about it with such compassion, which is a really difficult skill to have.

Matt: Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed that. Can we do it again?

Ella: Yes, please.

Matt: Thanks so much to Meg for joining us. What a fascinating conversation. If you wanna know a bit more about Meg, do go and check out the documentary England Meet England, which is on YouTube. We've watched it and we absolutely loved it.

Ella: And if you enjoyed today's episode, you can leave us a rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and you can also see full video versions of Home Again over on YouTube.

Matt: And to keep up to date with Home Again, just go to socials and follow us @homeagainpod, where you'll find details of upcoming guests, clips, and lots more. But for now, I'm Matt.

Ella: And I'm Ella, and this is Home Again, a podcast brought to you by SpareRoom.

Matt: See you next time.

Ella: Bye.