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fans have a love of narrative, for the stories that feed into key matches, big fights or prize-winning races. They are the stories that raise the stakes and heighten the enjoyment of sport’s vagaries. For rugby fans in the autumn of 2011 that story had become the rise of a young Welsh side towards a tantalising final against the tournament’s hosts, the New Zealand All Blacks. Wales’s place in the final began to feel deserved, somehow
right
. Support spread far beyond national borders, with even former English players such as Will Greenwood tweeting in the minutes before the France match, ‘I want to be Welsh!’
    The destiny of which the Welsh coaches had spoken in Spała was now, in the hours before kick-off, being spoken of by the rest of the world.
    *
    The last of the fireworks have fallen. 2012 is only ten minutes old and already the excitement of its birth is ebbing. The streets beyond are subdued, and the stadium falls back into a strangely natural soundscape: the running of rainwater in the storm drains, a cave-like dripping in the stands, the occasional creak of an aisle sign like the groan of a branch in the wind.
    Two and a half months ago, on the night of Wales’s semi-final against France, this empty pitch in front of me was filled with Welsh rugby supporters. Thousands more sat up in the stands, their Welsh jerseys rashing the stadium red. In all, 65,000 fans came here to watch Wales that night, even though their team was playing on the other side of the world. But this was no ordinary match. This was a match to be shared. And so the fans came, to watch together under the stadium’s closed roof as the game was screened at either end of the pitch. Undiluted by supporters of another team, never before had so many voices sung the Welsh national anthem in this stadium. Half a world away the Welsh team, lined up on the pitch at Eden Park, their arms about each other’s shoulders, also sang. And in the Red Lion pub on Bleeker Street in New York, and in the Three Kings in London, and on Aviano air base in Italy and Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and in homes and pubs and rugby clubs across the world, Welsh supporters sang. Because whatever the time of day, the story of this game was just too good to miss.
    But it was also too good to be true.

    *
    The script of a rugby match is written not by prophecy or hope, but by the second. And a second was all it took for Wales’s story to change that night; the 1,061st second , when Sam Warburton, refusing to be denied, threw the full force of his weight into a tackle on the French winger, Vincent Clerc.
    When the Frenchman received the ball from a line-out, Sam had been waiting for him, crouched in anticipation. Wrapping his arms about his waist and pulling at the backs of Clerc’s thighs, Sam straightened from his crouch to drive his right shoulder up and under the winger’s ribcage . At just fourteen stone, two stone lighter than Sam, Clerc was lifted into the air, his feet swept up over his head. As he fell backwards towards the ground, head and shoulders first, Sam’s grip loosened as if he already knew, even before Clerc had landed, what he’d done.
    Immediately the Welsh and French forwards tightened around the point of collision, running in to shove and pull at each other’s jerseys. Wales’s Luke Charteris pulled Sam from the melee as the referee, Alain Rolland, blew on his whistle three times to break up the arguing players . Clerc lay on his back behind the scuffle, the French doctor and physio kneeling beside him.
    Reaching into his pocket, Rolland pulled out a red card and showed it to Sam, pointing with his other hand off the pitch. He was sending Sam off for an illegal tip tackle. Sam walked to the touchline, his head bowed, andsat in one of the sub’s chairs. Someone placed a tracksuit across his shoulders, someone else ruffled his hair. But Sam just looked out onto the pitch, his chest still heaving with the effort of the game, trying to take in