The toughest year of Meg Jones’s life may yet end with triumphs both individual and collective. On Saturday afternoon, England’s vice-captain will line up at No 13 in a World Cup final after a superlative season that has seen her nominated for World Player of the Year. A player who has always worn her heart on her sleeve has done so with extra meaning in the last 12 months after the loss last August of her father, Simon, from lung cancer and mother, Paula, after a long battle with alcoholism.
Where others might have struggled in the grips of grief, Jones has managed to thrive, as expressive a character as any in this England squad. But her parents have never been far from her thoughts at this tournament. If progressing past France into the final was reason enough for emotion, the individual recognition she received only added to it – so when Charlie Hayter, England’s head of women’s performance, informed the Red Roses squad that Jones had been nominated in the moments afterwards, the tears that came to the centre’s face with her teammates exultant around her were perfectly natural.
