Meg Jones urges RFU to fund fertility treatment
Red Roses captain Meg Jones wants rugby to match football's move on fertility support, revealing she and fiancée Celia Quansah checked their egg count.
Meg Jones has called on the Rugby Football Union to back fertility treatment for players, pointing to recent moves in women's football as a model England should follow.
The Red Roses captain raised the issue on the Good, the Scaz and the Rugby podcast, after the Spanish football federation and Chelsea both announced financial support for fertility treatment. Jones called those decisions "class" and said rugby should "jump on too". She also revealed that she and her fiancée, former Trailfinders and sevens player Celia Quansah, have had their egg count checked.
That admission led her England teammate Hannah Botterman to say she and her partner, Wales player Georgia Evans, have also been looking into IVF.
Jones told BBC Sport why the topic now weighs on her:
"Why should my opportunity to have a family be taken away from me because I want to pursue my career? I wouldn't have thought it was something that we were lacking from maybe a governing point of view, but now I think about it I'm like, yeah, actually, I haven't got that opportunity to go and create a family and be guided on."
The RFU already runs a maternity policy, used by Abbie Ward, Lark Atkin-Davies and Zoe Aldcroft. On fertility specifically, the union currently offers a week of paid leave per treatment cycle, and for appointments, but no financial support. The governing body is understood to be open to discussing the issue further.
If the RFU does move on funding, it would put rugby in step with a shift already under way in football — and
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