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.

Managing expectations

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.

Tweet for change

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 any difference with us getting contracts, I know they were definitely looking at contracts prior to that.

But I felt I had to speak my mind because I had the luxury of being a professional athlete for two years and I wanted the girls in the Welsh squad to experience that as well, especially in such a massive World Cup year.

I would like to think it had something to do with it, but either way we are in a good place now.

We are all so thankful and grateful that it has happened and that we are full-time athletes.

Being Jaz

Individually a lot of us feel pressure and put pressure on ourselves. It is tough at times.

People maybe expect me to do something or score every time I get the ball, that is what I want to do but I cannot always do that.

Teams mark me quite a bit, like we would with fast people in other teams. I definitely feel as soon as I get the ball there are loads of people on me.

The more we train and play together, the better they can get the ball to me and the other back three.

I think we have such a threatening backline, we just want to get ball in hand and hopefully do some damage.

Six Nations targets and playing 'sexy rugby'

Ideally we want to come away with three wins, but we are looking for performance over results, that is huge for us.

France and England are fantastic teams, they are above the rest of us, but they have been full-time for a lot longer.

But take nothing away from Wales, we are going out to win every game because we are all competitive, we are all rugby players.

We can take a lot from our autumn series, we beat Japan and South Africa and gave Canada, one of the world's best teams, something to think about.

I was actually in Dubai watching the Canada game and I thought wow this is fantastic, we were just performing so well, playing some fantastic rugby.

We dropped off in the last 20 to 30 minutes, but we have worked a lot on our fitness. We are all fitter, stronger and faster now, so hopefully we can give a full 80 minute performance.

Without giving too much away, we want to be dominant, we want to be fast. We want to play some sexy rugby.

Competition and cake

Our head coach Ioan [Cunningham] joined us in some Broncos the other day. It is basically running, we go out to the 20 and back, the 40 and back, the 60 and back and so on.

You could tell he was really trying to beat us. He was next to Alisha [Butchers] and Alex Callender, he was trying to beat them.

It was hilarious watching him take part with us, but also fantastic that he gets involved, he does not take himself too seriously.

He did alright, he finished in the middle somewhere, he was just behind Alisha so quite fit actually, but he was dying after.

The coffee truck came to training afterwards. I love little things like that, it goes a long way for us as a squad because we are able to sit down and chill with each other afterwards, we are like a little family.

Ioan was the first in line for his coffee and cake, we were like hey, we are the players Ioan. But he is brilliant, he has brought so much energy to the squad, the same as the other coaches.

We hope we can do them proud.

Jasmine Joyce was speaking to BBC Sport Wales' Ceri Coleman-Phillips.