Women's Elite Rugby names Meghan Trainor as 'perfectly aligned' Grammy winning investor
Joining the board of the US semi-pro league ahead of season two kick-off this weekend, the singer saluted an ‘incredible group of women … in a typically male-dominated industry’
The National Maul comes to you a day early this week, thanks to the chance to if not break news, then to launch it simultaneously with its embargo being lifted.
(Short primer on the press and embargoes: very often, journalists know in advance of news any given body is going to release. The embargo is an agreement that the journalists will not publicize the news until an agreed time. Quite a few people in the media, some of them really quite powerful, are happy to agree embargoes then to eagerly break them. I never do that, even when doing this sort of stuff. While we’re here, some people in the media, some of them really quite powerful, also affect shock at the notion that anyone might, whisper it, pay sources for news, while very often and very happily paying sources for news themselves. See here, for footage of any given newsroom at any given time.)
Anyway: this National Maul is launching Thursday not Friday because that is when Women’s Elite Rugby decided to launch its big news ahead of its season two kick-off on Saturday. Once I’d got over my centrist dad’s disappointment that the Grammy winning artist long trailed as a WER investor wasn’t going to be Bono, I of course agreed to hold the news until told the embargo was lifted. My write-up follows, following the handy button below. At the Guardian, a longer WER season preview will publish before kick-off on Saturday.
On Thursday, Women’s Elite Rugby named the Grammy Award-winning singer Meghan Trainor as a new investor.
“I’m over the moon to be working with WER,” Trainor said, in a statement released by the US women’s semi-professional league.
“Their mission feels perfectly aligned with the message I’m always trying to spread with my music,” Trainor said. “It’s so exciting to be able to support this incredible group of women as they create a place for themselves in a typically male-dominated industry. I can’t wait for an incredible season!!”
Built on foundations laid by the amateur Women’s Premier League, which began play in 2009, WER kicks off its second season this week. On Saturday, the Boston Banshees are at home to the New York Exiles in Quincy, Massachusetts while the Chicago Tempest host the Twin Cities Gemini at a new venue for the league, Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois.
On Sunday, rounding out the opening weekend, the Bay Breakers host the inaugural champions, the Denver Onyx, at Heart Health Stadium in Sacramento, California — host to the women’s Eagles against New Zealand earlier this month and another venue new to the league.
Trainor’s investment, long teased by the league, comes as she releases a new album, Toy With Me.
“Meghan’s investment in WER is a game-changer,” said Phil Camm, WER’s chief commercial officer, in a statement on Thursday. “Her example as a role model for women who are powerful, uncompromising, and unapologetic about their talent makes her an extraordinary partner and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have her on board.
“Joining us at this pivotal moment, Meghan amplifies the momentum behind women’s rugby and the confidence in the sport’s future.”
Many top US women’s players play professionally in Premiership Women’s Rugby in England but the Eagles squad which last week completed the Pacific Four Series with a win against Australia and defeats by Canada and New Zealand contained a strong WER contingent.
The amount or structure of Trainor’s investment was not disclosed.
Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1993, and rising to fame with a doo-wop-inflected style and a body positive message, Trainor had a breakout hit with All About That Bass in 2014 and was named Best New Artist at the Grammys in 2016.
She has described herself as “hardworking, silly and special”, and said that if she could only have more of one of sex, money and fame, she’d choose money. In 2014, she told Billboard, “I don’t consider myself a feminist, but I’m down for my first opportunity to say something to the world to be so meaningful. If you asked me, ‘What do you want to say?’ it would be, ‘Love yourself more.’”
Ten years on, asked how she would like to be remembered, Trainor told the Guardian: “She was a fun, silly girl who wrote positive songs that helped others — and she was a good mama.” Trainor has advocated for causes including LGBTQ+ rights and gun control. Married to the actor Daryl Sabara, and with three children, she recently canceled a planned national tour, citing family needs.
Heralding a partnership that “marks a powerful intersection of sports, entertainment, and female empowerment”, WER said Trainor would continue “to use her platform to advocate for confidence, equality, and opportunity for women.
“Trainor’s investment comes at a milestone moment in her career, on the back of her latest album, Toy With Me. Known for chart-topping hits and anthems centered on self-confidence and authenticity, Trainor’s personal brand aligns seamlessly with WER’s mission to elevate women athletes and expand visibility of the sport nationwide.”
WER also said Trainor’s song Shimmer would score the title sequence to game broadcasts on the Women’s Sports Network, “further blending Trainor’s music with the league’s on-field energy and expanding the reach of women’s sports through entertainment.”
Unconverted tries
This weekend brings the Men’s Collegiate Rugby Association of America (CRAA) National Championships, at Kuntz Stadium in Indianapolis. There are 10 games to be played across various divisions from Friday to Sunday but the marquee event is the D1A final on Saturday, pitching Navy against Cal Berkeley. Given my proud status as an adopted Army rugger, it’s absolutely impossible for me to pick a winner except maybe “Match Abandoned Due to General Sense of Necessary Cosmic Justice, Army Awarded Title Despite Losing To Both Teams This Season”, which even Polymarket probably wouldn’t let me bet on. If I have to predict a winner, it’s going to be Jack Clark and Tom Billups’ Cal, who have crushed assorted challengers on their way to the final. Here’s Paul Keeler, CRAA director: “This championship represents the very best of what collegiate rugby has to offer. From the commitment of the student-athletes to the passion of the supporters, this event continues to grow every year. We’re excited to bring this level of competition to Indianapolis and create an unforgettable experience for everyone involved.” How to watch, if not in Indianapolis, is here.
Last weekend, I went back to Van Mildert, my old college at Durham University in the north-east of England. I was there to teach current students about how to make a living from journalism. “For God’s sake, don’t” would’ve been too short a course, so instead I wanged on for three days about Orwell and Trump, the Guardian and the Daily Beast (cautionary tales count double) and Raw Story, Zeteo and Substack. I did however find a little bit of time to wallow in nostalgia for the time I spent playing rugby for the university (and for Mildert) in the late 1990s. For the students’ dubious benefit, I even exhumed a couple of old pieces I wrote for Palatinate, the fine student paper which flourishes still.
Palatinate, June 1999, the piece that earned me a telling off from the principal. On my first brilliant blue evening in town, I wandered down the hill to the old town below the cathedral, then to the banks of the River Wear, where it turned out university rugby’s home field, the Racecourse Ground, hadn’t changed in the slightest. It’s still the same superb flat track where for three seasons I concentrated on winning as much ball as possible for a series of outrageously talented three-quarter lines, the better for them to run around and through either local men’s teams trying to kill us, or rival universities trying to keep up with us. Unless they were the Free State Shimlas, a bunch of Boer hardcases who came on tour in my final year and met us there and … ouch. Anyway, if you wondered if it’s possible to get Proustian rushes from studholes, dried mud and cut grass, it is, and the sound of a university cricket net practice on the next field over only added to the general sense of a glorious dream. Bruce Robinson’s Uncle Monty said there could be no true beauty without decay and of course he was right. At the Racecourse, there was a general sense of slow-ticking, slowly increasing distance. But some places never lose their magic.
The Racecourse, Durham, apparently suspended in time.
Further reading
Meghan Trainor: ‘I brought my entire family with me on my honeymoon’, Rosanna Greenstreet, Guardian
Meghan Trainor: ‘Magazines won’t airbrush me now – they don’t even hide my shapewear’, Leah Harper, Guardian
Meghan Trainor: ‘I Don’t Consider Myself a Feminist’, Andrew Hampp, Billboard
Women’s Elite Rugby: new league aims to boost US game and – finally – pay its players, MP, Guardian