Jaz Joyce

It was only five years ago that Jaz Joyce could “barely catch”, “barely pass” and only “got away with it” because she was fast. She also nearly quit five times. But she didn’t. Instead, she’s in the vanguard of a new era for Welsh women’s rugby.

Playing a game she barely understood, living a sporting dream she hadn’t even known was possible, on a stage made for the world’s greatest athletes, life after Rio was never going to be the same for Jaz Joyce. She’d come from nowhere, a complete unknown to everyone on the sevens circuit, but had found herself at the 2016 Rio Olympics, a full-time professional athlete at the same event, sharing the same canteen, the same athletes’ village, as the likes of Usain Bolt.

Then, no sooner had Great Britain lost the bronze medal match against Canada, Jaz Joyce wasn’t a professional anymore. She was a student. “It was really tough,” says Jaz, “really, really tough.

“I had to go back to university which I didn’t really want to do,” she continues, “it was just something that gave me the freedom to play rugby, because at uni you can chill a bit.

“But yeah, I struggled for a bit after [Rio],” she repeats. “It all happened so quickly and I’d been on this high at the Olympic Games and then I was going back to university, knowing that I’m going to have to wait another four years to be a professional rugby player again...

“I must have quit uni about five times,” continues Jaz, “just saying, ‘I’m not doing it anymore’, but I’d also come back to the fact if I quit I wouldn’t have anything. You can’t just be ready and waiting to be a full-time rugby player, because it’s not going to happen. Or at that stage, it was a long way off.”

She persevered with her degree in Cardiff, with the life of a student being the most compatible with a professional-level rugby training programme. “I love rugby, I love training,” she says. “Regardless of how busy I am, I will always fit in rugby, and I’ll always fit in training. So that’s what got me through. But the day I completed my degree was the best day ever.”

While the sevens world knew little about Jaz Joyce, Jaz Joyce was equally unfamiliar with sevens. “I didn’t even know what sevens was,” she admits, “but I was quick, so they gave me a trial.”

That trial – from Wales shortly before Rio – came when Jaz wasn’t even playing regular club rugby, with her university providing the only consistent outlet.

As part of the Scarlets programme, her game time at regional or club level had been minimal – “we only played four games a year” – but it was enough to entice the then Wales coach to come and watch, giving her a chance in Dubai.

She soon found herself in a wider Great Britain squad almost entirely made up of the English professionals. “There were only two Welsh girls in there, me and Laurie [Harries] and then it was dominated by thirty English girls, so it was really tough to get into.”

In the final cut, she was the only Welsh player to make it to Rio, and, despite the initial feelings of being an outsider, she soon settled in with her English team-mates. “As soon as we had a tournament where you’re able to actually play, then other players have more respect for you,” she explains. “Ultimately we had come into their ground, their arena, they [England] were the ones that qualified for us, so I do understand a bit if they thought, ‘how is this fair?’

“It was tough to get started, they had some really big characters, but two or three months in, they were the most welcoming people.”

Jaz, of course, was also still very much the novice, relying on raw talent to get by. “I’d never played sevens before,” she admits, “but it suited me: loads of space, not many people, and I guess you can get away with it, if you’re fast.”

But, while they were one squad in Rio, once it was over, the differences became clear. The English carried on the professional life, touring the world on the circuit, but Jaz had to adjust to normal life again, or as she puts it: “I was the only one that had to go back to reality.”

Born in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, Jaz played rugby at St David’s from the age of six. “It was what we all did in the area,” she says, “boys and girls, we all went to the rugby club to play rugby.”

And, playing with the boys until the age of thirteen, once again she admits her speed made up for an awful lot. “When I was younger, in fact up until about five years ago, I was just fast. I could barely catch, barely pass, I just got away with a lot because I was fast.

“Even the first year, prior to Rio, going up into the GB set-up, that’s all they wanted me for, my speed, but that full-time-for-a-year contract changed me as a rugby player completely: passing-wise, skillset...

“Simon Middleton and Richie Pugh (the GB coaches), were brilliant, but it was also being full-time and being in and around those girls who had been full-time for three years – it was learning from them as well.

“I had a year as a professional rugby player – who isn’t going to get better after that?”

The years that followed Rio, saw Jaz “not really knowing” what to do with her life, finishing her personal training degree, taking a job at the Celtic Manor – so she could “choose her own hours” around training. “I just knew that I didn’t want to be a personal trainer for the rest of my life,” she says.

Unsure of her next steps, together with long-term partner Alisha Butchers, and best friend Hannah Jones [all three of whom are now full-time with Wales], Jaz travelled to Australia and joined the Aon Women’s University 7s. “I actually quit my job and went to Australia for four months to travel and played rugby out there, which was fantastic and was one of the best rugby decisions I’ve made.

“It’s the tournament that filters the girls through to the national side and the internationals are split between eight sides – we had about three in our team – and you play four tournaments over four months. It was fantastic, I got to travel Australia, as well as play, and lived in Adelaide.”

But as with Rio, when they returned, life had to resume. “We had nothing to come back to really,” she admits. “Me and my partner ended up moving in with her parents, and I didn’t have a job really.”

Luckily, both found work and were able to buy a house before the world shut down: Jaz as a personal trainer, Alisha in sport development.

Jaz had been involved with Wales since Rio, earning her first fifteens cap in 2017 against Scotland – “we lost,” [15-14] she adds – but with no contract for her country, she was still biding her time for the Tokyo Olympics. And, balancing the professional standards of being an international rugby player with full-time work, was taking its toll; life with Wales was a world away from her Team GB life. “We didn’t have full-time players, we didn’t have full-time staff. So understandably, it was never going to be the standard of a full-time programme, so you just had to kind of let it go,” she admits of her early days with Wales. “I was too young at that point to put in my opinion, because I was just happy to be in with Wales.

“It’s different now though,” she adds. “I share my experiences and share what I’ve learned from being in a full-time programme, what I learned from being around world-class coaches and world-class players.”

Until recently, Wales had been playing with the equivalent of one hand tied behind their back, hindered against the likes of England and France by the lack of professionalism, something that was echoed in the results, finishing sixth in the 2021 Six Nations.

And, when we first met with Jaz, that hand was still tied, at least officially. “We’re not a professional team,” she says. “Most of the teams you play are professional, so it’s really tough for us to compete against them.

“I say this all the time in interviews and pretty much get bored of it, but it is really tough playing against teams that that’s their full-time job, whereas we come together once a week and then expect to beat England and France.

“The lows always come when we’re losing and our excuse is to blame that we’re not full-time,” she admits. “They are excuses, but they’re the truth as well. It’s kind of a drain on us as well in camp, we’re losing, we’re not professional, but then it’s like, ‘is anything going to get done about it? There’s only so much you can moan and you’re still there, so sometimes you just kind of need to get on with it.

“I think it’s really tough to be in a negative camp,” she adds, “or a camp that’s moaning all the time because we’re not winning.

“But yeah,” she continues, “it was tough to lose all the time.

“There’s been multiple times [when I almost gave up] and I probably can speak for most of the Welsh squad.

“When I was working in David Lloyd [pre-lockdown], I was getting up at 4am to get to work for 5am. I then worked as a personal trainer, which in itself is draining, on the gym floor, cleaning, doing PT sessions. Then I was able to get a gym session in from say 3pm to 4pm and then head straight to training, which was either Welsh training or club training.

“You’d get there for 6pm until 9pm, after skills, analysis, then get home at 10pm, then do that again.

“I went through a period of thinking ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m drained.’ And you’re moody and grumpy. You’re not enjoying stuff, and then everyone’s making you really angry. So yeah, it just wasn’t achievable.

“I would have liked to have thought that I wouldn’t have quit,” she reflects. “But it comes to a point where you can’t do this anymore. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic, you get to put on a jersey, sing the national anthem, play what we love, but it also gets to a point where you feel it’s not achievable to sustain a life, basically.

“So, when lockdown came, I was free as a bird for a year and a half.”

Had you visited Carmarthen’s Tesco during lockdown – for essentials only, of course – then you may have seen a blue-ish blur darting from aisle to aisle, searching out products at lightning speed and then disappearing out back. That would have been Jaz. “I’m contradicting myself now,” she explains, “but while I was ‘free as a bird’, having nothing to do the whole day [due to covid], I also went mental as well. I literally ended up getting two jobs. I worked looking after young, disadvantaged children, and then I also worked in Tesco.

“I didn’t last long,” she admits. “I think I did three shifts in Tesco. I was working on .com, so you’d have a list of things for people who order stuff online and you’d go around the shop and put stuff in the trolley.

“You used to get marked green, amber or red – depending on how fast you were. I obviously got competitive with myself and I wanted to get green every time, so I was sprinting around the shop picking up people’s deliveries.”

The second job, working with children in residential care from disadvantaged backgrounds, was different. “I’d work one-on-one with children aged sixteen to eighteen, even if it was taking them out to do simple things like eye tests.

“I’d worked in schools with disadvantaged children, and children with learning difficulties before, but never kind of been one-to-one with a child like that.

“But I loved it,” she says. “I didn’t obviously do that full-time, I worked, say three shifts a week, which kept me ticking over but also allowed me to kind of get relaxed.

“It did make me realise that teaching was something that I want do and I will happily do that till retirement type thing.”

At the delayed Tokyo Games, Great Britain again lost the bronze medal match, this time to Fiji, but Jaz scored against New Zealand in a 21-26 defeat, then managed braces against Kenya [a 31-0 win], USA in the quarter-finals [a 21-12 win] and also in the semi-final loss to France [19-26]. “The one thing that was different from Rio was playing with no crowd, it did suck a bit,” she says, “but I think because we knew how much support we had back in the UK, it did spur you on, knowing how many people were getting up and watching.

“But I think the setup leading to Tokyo was a lot different just because there were so many Scottish [players], so many Welsh, it was a like a proper Team GB programme rather than an English programme that we were just joining in.”

While her try-scoring has always gained Jaz plaudits, it was her tackling in two sevens events post-Tokyo with Great Britain that caused her to go viral in 2021. “Yeah, it’s insane,” she says. “Even just five years ago, no one expected me to be the kind of rugby player I am today.

“All my coaches and friends have been saying, ‘can you stop, you’re clogging up my social media page’ and it’s all jokes and stuff like that.

“But that’s what I kind of needed when I was younger growing up, seeing women go viral with stuff like that.

“Especially because I’m so small as well,” she adds. “You get told all the time, ‘you’re too small blah, blah, blah...’ all of that.

“For younger people coming through thinking rugby is a contact game and I’m too small, then seeing clips like that, hopefully, young girls and boys can look at it and be, ‘well, she’s the same size as me, maybe I can do it’. So, there’s a lot of positive that come with posts like that as well.”

Does it add to the pressure? “I put pressure on myself to play well and kind of live up to what people are saying on social media,” she responds, “which isn’t sometimes the best thing that you can do. But I do enjoy pressure.”

After Jaz had gone viral with Team GB, a post about having to return to normal life – full-time working with rugby effectively a ‘hobby’ with full-time hours – hit a nerve. And the groundswell of opinion about the status of the Welsh team after another disappointing Six Nations, saw the noise of criticism aimed at the union become deafening. “I think a lot of us have kind of stood up for ourselves and stood up about the programme itself and were like ‘this isn’t good enough’.

“There were a lot of people who’ve been in the system for a long time, who were saying ‘we’re not going to continue doing this anymore, it’s not fair on us’.

“It wasn’t fair on our mental health, and it wasn’t fair on us physically to work 38 hours a week – most people will do more than that – and then train pretty much 38 hours a week as well.”

The autumn series seemed to be a turning point. There were no contracts in place, but the positivity, and belief there would be, seemed to be slowly spreading through the squad, resulting in wins over South Africa and Japan, and a narrow defeat to Canada.

“Going out there and actually winning games meant so much to us as players,” she says. “That autumn campaign was brilliant for us as a team, winning two out of three and coming very close to a strong Canadian team who, I think, are third in the world.

“I think it was because we were all on the same page,” says Jaz, explaining the upturn in fortunes. “We’d all kind of spoken up saying ‘we need something in place’ and at autumns we did have good news, that stuff was going to get put into place. “But,” she adds, “we’d already been told it so many times before, and we were almost like, ‘oh, yeah, alright, tell us again...’.

“I think at one point before, we even signed something [but nothing happened], and then it was, ‘you’re going to get paid for camps’, and we didn’t get paid, or ‘you’re going to get paid for Six Nations’ and then didn’t. But I think this was the first year that they’d told us and we actually believed that something was going happen.”

The uncertainty from the past meant the players continued as they were, not risking changing or even hoping too much. Just in case. “And then obviously it actually happened,” she says. “I think even when you get the phone call, saying ‘congratulations, I’d like to offer you a contract’, you’re thinking ‘brilliant, happy days’ but there’s a bit that thinks ‘what if covid happens again?’.”

Covid continued to happen but, uniquely, so too did the evolution into professionalism for the Wales women’s squad, well at least twelve of them. A dozen full-time contracts were confirmed on 9th January. It brought to an end a period where it felt Welsh women’s rugby was going to be left for dead by the top players of the global game, forced into a second tier from which they would struggle to leave.

Jaz, together with the five other Bears in the first dozen, did have a contract in place with Bristol, so there remained some detail to be sorted. “There was a lot of back and forth for solicitors,” she explains. “But right from the start we acted as a [unified] twelve with certain girls taking charge of giving everything a proper read-through and getting solicitors involved.

“A few things came up that weren’t exactly wrong, but needed to be ironed out a bit and we just worked as a collective.

“And, on top of the twelve, we’ve now also got fifteen girls on retainers so there’s actually more like 27.

“I think the way they’ve done it has been brilliant,” says Jaz of the Welsh Rugby Union. “I know pretty much all of the twelve contracted girls have quit their job and while most of the girls pretty much have taken pay cuts, it’s not a problem, it’s the reality of budgets.

“I think a lot of us would have taken it for ten grand and then somehow funded it to go full-time.”

She doesn’t divulge the salary but says, “it’s enough to live off and some of the girls have never been on that kind of money because they were at uni – someone like Keira Bevan has never had a job in her entire life, so she’s happy.

“This is what we want to do,” she continues, “it’s a stepping stone, we’re building something so that, potentially, next year, we’ll have fifteen contracts on a little bit more money or maybe twenty contracts on the same wage.

“I can’t imagine they’re going to give us contracts and then take it away from us,” she says, considering the worse-case scenario. “But yeah, it’s brilliant to finally have them.”

And so Wales go into their first-ever Six Nations as professionals. “There will be loads more eyes on us which is expected, so there’s going to be pressure, but there’s twelve of us full-time so we should be better. If we’re not, something’s wrong.”

The improvement may not lead to wins over the superpowers of England and France, which is to be expected for a programme in its infancy, but not everyone will appreciate that. “There’s definitely going to be people saying, ‘they should beat England now they’re all full-time’; we’ll always have that negative kind of comment, but there’ll be positive comments too because I’ve been at the training camps, I’ve seen what’s happening, and I think we’re going to be a better team.

“I think we can achieve tremendous amounts,” continues Jaz. “I think, Wales as a nation, are a rugby nation with rugby players, we’re not just athletes.

“So, if you make us full-time athletes, full-time rugby players, and we get fitter, faster, and stronger, with the rugby ability we have... just see what we’re like after we’ve been full-time for a year.”   

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Karen Yeomans

This extract was taken from issue 17 of Rugby.
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