EXTRA SPICY: Magic Meg Jones just loves getting stuck in
As Trailfinders gear up to take on Saracens in the PWR Final, Red Roses captain Meg Jones reflects on the past year, her first season at Ealing, and bringing swagger to club and country.
Helen M Jerome gets the lowdown from Jones’ head coach, the opposition, and the magic maverick herself.
Having defeated serial and reigning PWR champions Gloucester Hartpury 29-26 away at ‘Queensholm’ you wouldn’t put it past Trailfinders to wrest the title from favourites Saracens. Especially with Meg Jones on prime form.
The semi-final stats only tell part of the story. Trailfinders had 229 tackles to Gloucester’s 135, and 100% scrum success against 90.1%. Crucially they scored five tries to Gloucester’s four.
Meg Jones alone beat 10 defenders in this match, with 15 carries. She was also everywhere you looked, cheekily popping up, spinning and grinning for the camera, in the heat of the action and urging her team forward to the finish line.
Impact
Remarkably, this is Meg Jones’ first season at Trailfinders and her move from Leicester Tigers has been seamless. When I ask her club head coach, Barney Maddison about her impact, he beams.
“Meg’s been class on and off the pitch,” he says. “She’s just a great human.”
Maddison says when players like Jones are ‘good people’ everything comes together. “So yeah, she’s an easy person to coach.”
What makes it even better, he adds, is that “she’s fully bought into the way we want to do things here, which is class, and then it just makes things so much easier.”
Speaking to Meg Jones herself, she modestly reflects on her incredible season for club and country.
“Yeah, all I ever want to do is just play some good rugby… it’s not always the case.”
Nuances
Rugby runs through Jones like a stick of rock, and she adds, “I’ve just loved playing the game since the age of six, so it’s the only thing I know.”
Anyone who has seen Jones play will nod in agreement, when she says: “I love getting stuck in.”
I love buying into a common goal. I love achieving things as a team, and finding the nuances within the game to just keep getting better.
MEG JONES
What’s become more obvious in the last 12 months is her belief in the strength of a squad. “I love buying into a common goal,” says Jones, “I love achieving things as a team, and finding the nuances within the game to just keep getting better.”
This insight applies to playing for the Red Roses as well as her new club. As she observes, “Obviously country was class coming off the back of Grand Slam. Then immersing myself within the Trailfinders way and getting stuck in as much as we can.”
After starting the season in less convincing fashion, Trailfinders turned things around and hit peak form at just the right moment, to secure them fourth place in the PWR, then the semi-final victory over Gloucester-Hartpury, and now the final against local London rivals, Saracens, themselves in red-hot form.
Sale Away, Sale Away, Sale Away*
Honest as ever, Jones admits: “We probably didn’t start the way we wanted to, but we’ve definitely found the ingredients now, and we’ve all bought in fully.”
When I ask Jones to pick out some highlights from this season, she says “so many”, and Maddison immediately interrupts her: “You won that small cup, didn’t you, just before Christmas was it?”
“Oh, is it?” she quips, “Oh, the World Cup? Yeah. Winning the World Cup was very cool.”
For her club, she feels that there have been many crucial moments. “Yeah, for Trailfinders, I think playing Sale away, I actually really enjoyed that game.”
This was the team’s first win of the season, finishing 64-22 on November 8th 2025, in Round Three, and was obviously pivotal for Jones.
“That was really good,” she says. “I saw the game work then, and that really gave me a lot of confidence in what we were doing here at Trailfinders. So that was kind of one of those penny-drop moments, which helped.”
Getting the captaincy for the Six Nations was a huge honour as well. Yeah, getting the head nod from Mitch [England head coach, John Mitchell] was massive.
MEG JONES
Unsurprisingly, Jones also acknowledges the importance of what happened for her internationally in 2026. “Getting the captaincy for the Six Nations was a huge honour as well,” she smiles, “Yeah, getting the head nod from Mitch [Red Roses head coach, John Mitchell, below left] was massive.”
Under Your Skin
Don’t take Jones and her head coach’s word on her though. Listen to Saracens scrum-half and PWR player of the year, Liv Apps, who has faced Jones not only for her club, but also for Canada against England in last year’s World Cup final.
“Meg is great,” says Apps, “she’s an excellent player. She’s one of those players that likes to get under your skin.”
There’s more to Jones than just her excellence as a player, though, adds Apps. “She likes to play the game within the game and I respect that of her.”
“It’s always an enjoyable game against Meg,” she admits, “Because you know you’re gonna get world-class competition.”
Putting differences aside, Apps says: “I think she’s a class player and she definitely adds so much to that team.
“So honestly, I’m just excited to play against her. That’s just going to make the quality of the rugby so much better.”
Extra Spicy
I remind Liv Apps that Meg Jones loves a bit of backchat during a game. In fact, she’s said she’s all for a bit of fighting talk, claiming that it adds a bit of ambience to the game, a bit of swagger, a bit of energy. Not to mention a bit of entertainment, which she reckons all the spectators want to see!
Jones has even admitted trying to get in the opponent’s head. Although she insists there’s no malice, and you always walk off best mates, and “yeah, happy days at the end of the day”.
And Liv Apps has no problem with any of this, re-running memories of previous encounters with Meg Jones for club and country, and beaming as she sums her up: “She loves the chat, she loves the chat. It’s gonna be extra spicy on the side”
Bring. It. On.
PWR final. Saracens v Trailfinders at Twickenham Stoop on Sunday June 28th, 2pm.
Also live on TNT Sport.
[*niche Enya reference]
Photos: Helen M Jerome
