Thomas and Co play to the Max

From Shane Williams, dancing through the great Black line like his old hero Gerald Davies, to Stephen Jones, playing as Phil Bennett for a day, they produced more material for the cheering Max Boyce than he's had for four years - since the dragon stirred briefly at Wembley to incinerate England's Grand Slam.

Then there was Thomas. Just 20, too young to be cowed by any stigma attached to the team but old enough to be stung by it, he stood out as the symbol of indignation. "There's only so many times you can get kicked in the teeth," he explained, pondering the merciless criticism when they lost a record 10th straight Test in August.

It wasn't about fighting for a tradition but fighting for your mates. They had been teased about their yoga and their DIY cooking and silly theme parties, yet Thomas reckoned: " We get through the criticism because it's a great bunch. There's a great team spirit which has never been affected during the low times."

He led the kick back, his pace and power from the back of the scrum constantly smashing gaping holes in the All Blacks defence. The New Zealand coach John Mitchell liked "the number six" but didn't even know his name. He will now.

Yet as he pondered the 53-37 scoreline, the thing that niggled Thomas was that "we lost when we had them on the rack". Here was a hint that maybe the new Welsh generation isn't going to settle for mediocrity any more.

As Thomas made clear on this day of All Black vulnerability - one New Zealand journalist told me he'd never seen such a poor defensive display by them - a Kiwi mentality lies, ironically, at the heart of the renaissance.

Wales's New Zealand coach Steve Hansen had watched the 55-3 pummeling by the All Blacks in Hamilton in June and realised his side had to work on closing the power chasm.

"All we've been doing for two months since under Andy Hore (Kiwi fitness coach) is work on weights, power and speed endurance. It's paying dividends now and, whereas the Southern Hemisphere teams have always been ahead of us, the gap's getting closer," enthused Thomas.

Yet, as Hansen acknowledged, Wales were still playing catch-up, three months against the seven years that the fitness programmes for the All Blacks and England have been running. The new regional set-up in Wales would change things but, for the moment, his players weren't used to the required level of intensity for weekly back-to-back Tests.

The blessing for him is that he now has the luxury of "welcome selection headaches" after so many of the shadow team played out of their skins but the blessing for England is that it seems highly unlikely that any side Hansen selects can scale those peaks, both mental and physical, again.

Yet a 6ft 5in, 17-and-a-half stone giant begged to differ. "This game has given us fresh belief. We can do it," boomed Thomas. The look on his face should have been warning enough for England.