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pointers, knew this kick was within Leigh’s range. And so did Leigh. In training he’d regularly converted longer kicks than this from inside his own half.
    Standing with his knees slightly bent and with his hands rocking rhythmically at his sides, Leigh stared down at the ball in front of him. The roars of the crowdwashed around the stadium, rising and falling like waves. Eyeing the posts for a last time he lowered his head and, slowly tipping forward, took a series of quickening steps towards the ball. Planting his left foot firmly beside the tee, Leigh struck the ball hard with his right foot, sudden and sharp, straight towards the posts.
    The hands of the Welsh fans at Eden Park immediately rose above their heads. And in the Red Lion in New York, and in the Three Kings in London, and in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff thousands of other pairs of hands also reached into the air. And rising with them, across the time zones of the world, came a cheer, voiced as one by every Welsh supporter on the planet. The ball was sailing towards the middle of the posts.
    But then, instead of building to a crescendo, the cheer began to fade. The raised hands began to fall – in the Red Lion, in the Three Kings, in the Millennium Stadium – coming to rest on the tops of their owners’ heads. And that’s where they stayed, in an image of despair, as the ball, turning end over end, dropped short of the crossbar by an inch. Leigh had missed the kick.
    Five minutes later the match was over, the final score Wales 8 – France 9.
    The script was written. Wales had lost.
    *
    Skirting the edge of the pitch I walk around the stadium’s bowl to the mouth of the player’s tunnel and walk up it, the thousands of empty seats diminishing behindme. Once inside, further down the corridor that leads towards the Wales changing rooms, I can make out the eleven dark wooden boards on which every Welsh player’s cap number and name is written in gold leaf. The first, in 1881, is James Bevan, an Australian who played for my old club, Abergavenny, and the first captain of Wales. The last is number 1,089, Alex Cuthbert, a young winger who won his first cap here last month when he was twenty-one , just four years after he’d first picked up a rugby ball. Between them, nested in the tight rows at number 430, is my great-great-uncle, Archie Skym. Capped twenty times, Archie was nicknamed ‘The Butcher’, although at thirteen stone, regardless of being a prop, he’d still be the lightest member of the squad today.
    I descend the flight of stairs and pass the silver dragon on the wall again. Pausing to look at it I realise this is the first thing a visiting team will see on a match day. That claw, raised between salute and attack.
    Previous World Cups have been catalysts for change for Wales. In the wake of disappointing performances coaches were sacked, new methods adopted, a rash of new players brought into the squad. But the World Cup in New Zealand posed a different question for the national side. Here was a young squad, mostly at the start of their careers, already hitting their stride. They hadn’t felt lucky to be in that semi-final, but they had felt unlucky to lose it. So the question it posed to Wales was no longer one of change, but of promise. In both senses of the word.
    Could Wales fulfil the promise they’d shown? And could they keep the promise they’d apparently made by playing so well at the highest level? Could they return to Europe and stamp their mark on northern-hemisphere rugby, not just by winning the coming Six Nations tournament, but by winning all five of their matches to secure a third Welsh Grand Slam in eight seasons? Only two other generations of Welsh players had ever won three Grand Slams: between 1905 and 1911, and between 1971 and 1978. Could Warren Gatland’s youngsters, with the majority of their international playing days still ahead of them, be the third golden generation of Welsh rugby? Ever since their