Jasmine Joyce column: Professional Wales raring to go in Six Nations

In her BBC Sport column, Olympic sevens star and Wales wing Jasmine Joyce talks about the excitement behind Wales' first Six Nations with professional players and what it feels like to be the most marked woman in women's rugby.

I am really excited for the start of the Six Nations. It is an exciting time for us, not just because of the contracts but because it is a World Cup year, the pinnacle of the 15s game.

The atmosphere and culture in camp is the best it has been for a while and credit to the coaches for making it such a nice place to be. We can be ourselves and hopefully that will show when we are playing on the pitch.

Last year was not our best Six Nations, you can tell by the results, but we are ready, ready to go out and perform.

We also only had three games in 2021, this is the first time the Six Nations has been held as a full tournament this time of the year, it is massive.

As a squad, we just keep getting better in training, we are really going to take that forward and hopefully get a win against Ireland in our opening game.

A lot of people are putting pressure on us after we went professional. Yes we have full-time athletes now and should do better, but people have to understand that we have only been full-time since January.

That is not a long time to prepare for a massive event like the Six Nations, especially against teams like England and France who have been full-time for years.

I have to say though, the coaches have been brilliant.

And the amount of support we have had as a squad since we turned professional has been massive. Hopefully we can make them proud and give something back.

I do not know if the tweet I put out back in September about having to go back to work after the World Sevens Series made