Jasmine Joyce is meant to be on holiday when this interview takes place.
You'd never know it, though, as the 26-year-old Welsh rugby ace is beaming and laughing as she fields questions.
The lightning-quick Wales winger has just got engaged to international and Bristol Bears team-mate, Wales flanker Alisha Butchers, so it's no wonder she's on cloud nine.
The surprise proposal came just 24 hours prior to this chat, topping off a remarkable six months for St Davids native Joyce.
In a women's rugby world where being a full-time professional is not standard, world-class Joyce - often referred to as Wales' best player - spent last year as a pro with Team GB where she headed to her second Olympics in Tokyo and lit up the World Sevens Series with her scintillating pace and footwork.
Having publicly aired her need to find a full-time job when Team GB's programme ended at the close of 2021 to revert to an England set-up, the Welsh Rugby Union's historic decision to award full-time professional contracts to 12 Wales Women internationals came just in the nick of time. Joyce and 24-year-old Butchers - who both took up mixed rugby aged six at St Davids RFC and Bynea and Llanelli Wanderers respectively - are among the chosen 12.
Joyce - known throughout the game for her remarkable pace and superb strike rate despite being told she was too small for rugby in her earlier years (thank goodness she paid no heed) - has been a late full-time starter in the programme due to completing her PGCE teacher training to prepare for her post-rugby playing career.
Her partner, vocal leader Butchers, boasts an excellent skill set, having been capped 32 times since 2016, and has put her job with Active Carmarthenshire on hold to play rugby full-time. Less than a year ago, she was forced to ask for money to pay for ankle surgery following an injury on club duty and through speaking up helped effect change throughout England's top league.
As well as the dozen full-timers, 11 more retainer/semi-professional contracts have been awarded in what is set to be a landmark year for women's rugby. The TikTok Women's Six Nations kicks off right after the men's, in a standalone window for the second consecutive year, before a postponed World Cup takes place this autumn in New Zealand.
But first, there is plenty of excitement closer to home for Joyce.
"Me and Alisha played for Bristol on the Saturday and won which made the weekend even nicer, then we went to stay in Cardigan Bay to a hotel called The Cliff - beautiful, stunning, we had a seaview room which was lush," Joyce explains when asked about her engagement.
"We went for a spa in the morning, two hours using the sauna, pool. Alisha’s sisters had planned and decorated the room. We got to the room, Alisha said ‘close your eyes’ and then we walked in. It was lush, perfect, she smashed it."
Heart-laden bunting in the room read: "Jasmine, will you marry me?" while a heart shape was formed on the bed made from rose petals and candles.
The pair looked delighted as they smiled for the camera, accompanied by some fizz, and their dog Nala was also roped into the proposal, as she was pictured wearing a bandana which read: "Will you marry my mum?"
"I said yes before she’d asked me, actually!" Joyce explains. "Obviously we were both emotional. We were both crying and I was like ‘ask me, then!’ It took, well, seconds.
"I knew something was going on because she was on her phone all the time and we’re never on our phones, both of us. I thought it was maybe a surprise like going for brunch with my parents or something. But it was a bit more than that!
"She’s had it planned for a while. I know she went to see my parents two months ago when I was in Dubai and things like that."
They could have been celebrating with a cruise but that has been postponed due to them both starting in the WRU's performance programme not so long ago.
"We’re only a month in, we couldn’t really ask for a week off then five weeks into our programme!
"We’ve just rescheduled it for June when we’ve got a bit of down time before, hopefully, going to the World Cup. We changed it to the Greek islands."
As for wedding planning, it is taking something of a back seat in a jam-packed rugby year.
"We'll definitely look now and again when we have time off on a Wednesday, for example, but nothing is going to be set in stone any time soon. Probably both of us will focus and concentrate on rugby for the majority of this year. It’s a big year with the World Cup and everything like that."
The couple have known each other since they were teenagers, playing in the same team and sharing lifts, but have been together for around five years.
"We started hanging out more and then got closer and then it just kind of escalated from friendship to being partners. We just click so well, we just know each other. It’s brill."
They spend an enormous amount of time together compared to most partners, as they are now both full-time with Wales and both play for Bristol Bears - who are second in the table of England's top women's rugby competition, the Allianz Premier 15s.
So where does rugby stop and start for the couple?
"We definitely don’t critique each other!" Joyce laughs. "I would definitely be single by now if I did that!
"We obviously speak about it because it effectively is our lives, especially now with both of us, that’s our job. We definitely speak about it but there’s times we’ll say, if we’re going out for dinner, 'right there’s no rugby tonight' type of thing.
"Our job is rugby, we both do it together so we don’t have any kind of separation of each other and it’s a hobby for us as well. It definitely is tough to not speak about it but it’s just so easy that we both enjoy doing similar things."
As for the rest of their team, Joyce believes having players in relationships in the squad does not change its dynamic.
"To be honest, there is a few of us in the squad together now.
"It doesn’t change it. If we were to all go out or go for dinner or go for lunch as a squad, then it’s different because we’re not in a professional rugby environment, but you’d never be able to tell that me and Alisha are together if you didn’t know. It’s the same with the other couples. It’s such a nice atmosphere and environment here. We’re just team-mates as well as everyone else and then obviously when we go home we’re partners there."
So, how is Wales' superstar coping with such a full-on couple of months?
"It is a lot!" she says with a beaming smile.
"The last year or six months, I don’t think as a rugby player or even as a person I could have asked for much else. Coming off the back of the Olympics, getting to play on the World Series which I probably won’t get the chance to do again, becoming a full-time rugby player, completing my PGCE - knowing that after my rugby career has ended I will have a job, and it’s something I love doing, I want to go into teaching - and then getting proposed to.
"I can’t imagine a better six months ever for anyone to ever experience!
"As a rugby player, this is what you want to do, to become a professional.
"There's a lot of girls in the 12 who didn't expect to be contracted. You almost put it off, you’re like ‘I don’t really want one, I don’t think’, ‘no, I think I’m happy with my job’, and then when you get offered that contract, I don’t think you realise how much you actually wanted it. We’re into the stead of things now and I think we’re embracing the journey."
Wales Women's new professional status means, in terms of resource, they are punching with the likes of fully-pro England and semi-pro France in the upcoming Women's Six Nations, which takes place in March and April and has a title sponsor for the first time ever in video-focused social media platform TikTok.
The WRU's contracts development, taking effect from January this year and lasting for 12 months before deals are renewed/offered to new players, came off the back of a surge in public support for Wales Women in the wake of last year's winless Six Nations.
Now, full-time players will no longer have to play the juggling act as they make the jump from weekend training camps and one midweek session to training up to four times a week for Wales. The pressure has been taken off semi-pro Wales players, too, freeing up time in their busy schedules to be able to train and, crucially, recover effectively. In addition, there will be fees for matchday 23 squad players for the first time and, for those players who are not contracted, World Cup selection and training camp attendance payments.
Wales have head coach Ioan Cunningham at the helm, who oversaw an impressive autumn campaign which yielded two wins from three, entertaining performances and a more attack-focused gameplan.
"It’s completely different," Joyce said of the new Wales environment.
"We've got new coaches in now where we know they're going to be staying until the end of World Cup so we don't have that kind of uncertainty of ‘are we going to have another coach in?’ That's fantastic for us.
"But also we've never had full-time professional players here. We’re all happy to be here, we want to learn, we want to get better. We haven’t had a full-time professional environment before so we're all still learning but enjoying every second of the journey."
Joyce believes Wales are bound to improve given the new arrangement, which sees Wales Women train out of the Vale Resort's National Centre of Excellence, parallel to Wayne Pivac's men.
"A lot of us girls here are already professional in our own way, as in we did everything we could alongside jobs to be the best athlete and person we could be.
"Now, with it being our jobs, it is everything we are doing, so we’re going to get better, there’s no question about it. We’re eating better, we’re recovering better, every session’s at 100%."
While getting paid is a tremendous start, truly being a professional requires so much more than that, and Joyce hails the set-up at Welsh rugby's HQ as offering so much more than payment for their services, pointing to analysis, physio and even just being fed properly.
"We’re getting paid, which is massive. It’s something we’ve never been paid for before. We’ve done the same amount of training but just done it for free, effectively.
"We’re getting food - we get fed every time we’re here. We get breakfast, lunch and a snack. You don’t have to worry about waking up and thinking ‘I have to have breakfast’ or ‘I have to cook when I get home’ and all of that. That is a massive help.
"We get one-to-one physio appointments, we’ve got a masseuse coming in where we’ll have appointments once or twice a week. We can only stretch and recover so much individually ourselves. Jo, our physio, is fantastic and she’s only got 12 of us at the moment so it gives her the opportunity to work on us as athletes and see what extras we can do.
"Analysis is massive now, we have time. We get to sit down, there’s laptops everywhere here, we’re able to analyse as a squad rather than individually. If I’m watching something, someone else might see something else. There’s so many things that get added on rather than just being ‘professionals’."
Wales' attention will soon be turning to their pre-Six Nations warm-up game against a USA Select XV - made up of players plying their trade in the Premier 15s - on Saturday, March 12, at Parc y Scarlets before kicking off their campaign away to Ireland two weeks later. It is at that point onward that fans will be able to gauge just how much impact going full-time has already made, although it must be stressed it is a long-term strategy.
"There’s going to be pressure on us in the Six Nations to perform because there are 12 full-time contracts, there are retainer girls coming in," Joyce said.
"There are going to be eyes watching us, pressure on us, but we’re certainly going to perform better. We’re going to have four months together so I can’t see us not performing better. But I think teams like England and France are already that, probably, four-year step ahead of us. We’re playing the catching up game. Our training camps have been fantastic and I don’t think we’re far off but I think we’ve got to have that support for at least a year for us to get into the rhythm of it.
"But Ireland, Scotland, Italy, they’re all in similar positions to us, they are contracted sometimes, some not. It’ll be brilliant to see where we are. I think Six Nations will be a great stepping stone for us, and also for us to rank ourselves and see where we are against these teams."
While it is a busy year for 15s, it is on the Sevens world stage where Joyce first made her name and should any invitation arrive for Wales to compete in the sport's abbreviated version this year it would present her with something of a dilemma.
Fiji and New Zealand could not play in the recent World Series events in Malaga and Seville, with Poland among the teams invited to plug gaps in the schedule. With the World Series resuming in Canada in April, and the final round in Toulouse in May, the possibility of Wales being roped in as an invitational side is not unthinkable. But there will also be pressure to rest in time for the 15s Rugby World Cup in October and November.
"It’s tough. I love Sevens and I know a few of the girls love Sevens here, but due to it being such an important 15s year - I want to go to a 15s World Cup so bad - it would have to be spoken about and it would have to be a plan. Do I go and play Sevens and not have time off? Would I be allowed to do that?
"My focus for this year is most certainly 15s. Don’t get me wrong, we may not ever have another chance to play on a World Series so to get the opportunity and turn that down, I don’t know what we’d do. At the end of the day, I’ve got to look after myself physically and mentally, make sure I have the time off.
"It was great to see the English girls get bronze [at Seville Sevens] - a little bit jealous but fantastic to see them out there. I don’t think I’ve ever supported England as much as I do now because I know all the girls [from Team GB]. I don’t think I’ve ever actually cheered for England other than when they were qualifying for the Olympics!"
A modest, down-to-earth Welsh woman, there is no denying that Joyce is one of the poster girls of women's rugby and Welsh rugby in general. But, as with all of her team-mates, the fact there is a bigger picture at play is not lost on her.
"We want to be role models to younger boys and girls coming through, and I think we certainly do that as a Welsh nation.
"Even if there’s a couple of boys and girls who watch and say ‘I want to give that a go’, I think that’s what our end goal is. Yeah, we want to win Olympic gold medals and World Cup medals and everything like that but there is a longer journey and goal that we want to get out of playing rugby as well."
- Tickets for Wales' home Six Nations games at Cardiff Arms Park have gone on sale at wru.wales/w6n. They face Scotland on Saturday, April 2, at 4.45pm, France on Friday, April 22, at 8pm and Italy on Saturday, April 30, at noon. Tickets are priced at £10 for adults and £5 for those under 16.
