Before every game, the 20 girls in Australia's Rugby 7s squad form a pack in the change room and shout and scream the hardcore song "Beast":

When the sun rises / I wake up and chase my dreams.

I won't regret when the sun sets / Cuz I live my life like I'm a Beast.

I'm a motherf**kin' beast

This is the only professional women's rugby team in Australia.

For the 20 players in the squad, Rugby 7s is a magic ticket to professional rugby and a glamorous list of tournament destinations - Hong Kong, Dubai, Amsterdam, London, Rio.

Unlike male rugby players who can go professional at club level, female rugby players have few opportunities. Until a few years ago, there was no professional women's rugby team. Then, in 2009, rugby was made an Olympic sport for the first time in almost 100 years. A couple years after that, Australian Rugby Union (ARU) began assembling a squad of gun female athletes.

Share Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Whatsapp 'I'm a beast'

That's how Ellia Green, who owns the bluetooth speaker that plays the team anthem in the change room before the game, found herself at a talent day in Melbourne.

"My cousin wanted to attend," Green tells Hack. "She needed a lift. We drove together and it was by chance I got asked to join in. I was just there to support, really."

Green knew nothing about rugby, but she happened to be one of the fastest women in Australia - a junior athletics champion who was slogging it out on suburban sprint tracks, working on form and fitness to chase her dream of becoming "the fastest women in the world".

And she was getting close. She was running 100m in 11.20 seconds. The Australian record is 11.11 seconds. The world record is 10.49 seconds.

Now Rugby 7s beckoned.

In 2014, Green travelled with the team to Canada for a three-match series. In the dying minutes of final game of the tied series Canada was leading 15-12. Green took the ball and ran 75 metres to score what became one of the most famous tries in women's Rugby 7s.

She had found her place in the team.

Skip YouTube Video FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

They break bones

For Alicia Quirk, the magic ticket arrived one day in the mail. She had grown up in a small country town and played "every sport under the town". Her dream was going to the Olympics, and when she started playing touch rugby she thought that dream was over.

She played club level and then began representing Australia. In 2011 she flew to Edinburgh for the touch rugby World Cup, scored three tries, and came home with the trophy.

"Literally as soon as I got home I had a letter in the mail from the ARU saying you've been identified as potential player to play at the 2016 Olympics," Quirk tells Hack.

Would you like to come give it a shot?

"At first I thought it was a bit of a joke. I'd never done any kind of contact [sport]."

Alicia Quirk is 172cm tall and weighs less than 60kg - she's one of the more lightly built players in the team.

"I learned how to tackle the hard way."

Quirk and Green's stories are like many on the team - women who've played non-contact sports like sprinting or touch football.

Share Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Whatsapp Female players often come from non-contact sports.

Team physiotherapist Claire McGann tells Hack the female players get different kinds of injuries from men, who are more likely to have played contact sports before.

"Yes, we've had a broken ulna radius [forearm] this year," she says.

"And a fractured fibula [lower leg]."

"And a couple of AC [shoulder] injuries."

Yeah, they break bones."

Share Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Whatsapp Chloe Dalton of Australia is tackled by Audrey Amiel of France.

'We're every chance' of Olympic gold

The women's squad of 20 will be cut to a final 12 in June.

"Everyone has the same colour jersey but they can't be your friend too much," says Green. "You've got to be competing for your spot.

It's mates and rivals, it's a love-hate relationship."

There's a lot riding on the team's performance at Rio.

The ARU is gambling some of the future of rugby union in Australia on the success of Rugby 7s, and the women's team is ranked number one in the world. They're a genuine gold medal hope.

"We had a goal we set three years ago and we're that much closer to it," says the team's coach, Tim Walsh.

"We want to go to the Olympics and we want to win gold.

"That's why all these girls play.

"If we perform to our best ability we're every chance."

Share Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Whatsapp 'We're every chance'

In Rugby 7s, the field is the same size as rugby union, but each team has half as many players (seven instead of 15). This means lots of running. It's a bit like T20 cricket. The games are short and weekend-long tournaments feature dozens of teams.

The carnival atmosphere can attract huge crowds. One of the biggest tournaments, the Dubai Rugby 7s, saw 100,000 fans in three days.

But for many years the game has not caught on in Australia.

The same Rugby 7s World Series tournament attracted about 20,000 fans to the Gold Coast in 2014.

This year the tournament moved to Sydney - and the crowds were much larger. Allianz Stadium was sold out for both days, according to the ARU, which sees Rugby 7s as a way of attracting new fans to the rugby union code, and even poaching some from rugby league.

It plans to increase female participation by 15 per cent come 2020 - partly through a non-contact version of Rugby 7s called VIVA7s that it's rolling out at the school and club level.

For the moment, though, all attention is on Rio.

"To be taken around the world to play a sport is a blessing," says Green.

"But the girls work so hard to even get picked to get on that plane.

It's a lot of blood sweat and tears."