Lee Byrne’s journey was of no epic length, perhaps 15 metres in all. He had run a course converging with that of Shane Williams, the Welsh wing who is playing at a blazing career high. Williams, shuffling across the field almost idly, had spotted two hulking Australian forwards on the defensive line. He held up the ball to draw their attention and, as other Welsh players made dummy runs, Byrne came knifing through on the angle between the two giant Wallabies, took the perfect pass and ran on to score.

It was a try that illustrated precisely how this exciting Welsh team are trying to play - heads-up rugby with skill and pace and patience. The execution was so beautiful that Byrne made his scoring run to the posts in splendid isolation. You see him looking to his left and right in disbelief. “There was nobody about. I thought it must have been whistled back for a forward pass or something.” The big clue was the sound of 75,000 Welsh supporters going nuts.

This try was to play a huge part in the Welsh win and sealed an autumn in which Wales were conspicuously the best of the European teams. For Byrne and his career, that run was powerfully symbolic. For me, and coming after his bril-liance in the Wales Grand Slam of 2008 and throughout the autumn series, it sealed his passage from the ranks of fine international players to another plane altogether - true world class. Sometimes, you distrust comparisons across the ages, but people have been claiming that Byrne is the best Welsh full-back since JPR Williams and I have combed my memory all week for anyone as good in between them.

Byrne has the full armoury. He has a siege-gun boot; one swing from Byrne, by no means a giant, can take play 80 metres away. He is a magnificent footballer and defender and, more to the point, a brilliant attacker.

He sees at least part of his role as interpretation of the magic of Shane Williams. “I’ve played with him so often with the Ospreys and Wales and I know him so well. When you are following him on one of his runs, you know he will sidestep and make the half-break, so it is up to me to read him.”

Yet the regal stride of Byrne’s career is a recent phenomenon. He has had a superb couple of seasons, but he is 28, not 22. He had always been a good player. He was discovered at Bridgend Athletic, played for Tondu, squeezed into a development contract with Llanelli and then joined the Ospreys.

However, he never really lived up to his talents. He was always a fringe international player, and although he made his debut for Wales in 2005, he did not make the 2007 World Cup squad. And, as he now realises, it was not so much selectorial doubts holding him back (although his quietness was distrusted). It was his own doubts.

“I used to worry about rugby so much. I used to dwell on all my mistakes and beat myself up. I would get so aroused about a game on the Friday that, when the game came round on the Saturday, all I e v e r h a d w e r e n e g a t i v e thoughts. I would just have drained myself, the nervous energy had used it all up.”

It was probably only when talking to a sports psychologist in the Welsh camp in the past few weeks that he fully realised it, but, in his own head, it was his right to the jersey that was in question. “I had never had any recognition or any honours with the Welsh age-group teams. I’d worked as a carpenter and in factories and the others had always been only rugby players. They had played in big games. There was me from a division five club. I would spend ages asking myself if I really belonged out there.”

It speaks volumes that he worked it out largely for himself. “Now, I just get on with it. Shaun Edwards told me not to think about the game, told me to go off and read a book. Now, I never think about the game much before it starts. And I know in my heart that I deserve to be out there.”

And yet the idea that he has reached some kind of comfortable plateau can be brutally dispensed with because of this Welsh team’s culture.

On Tuesday, he reported to the team headquarters at the Vale of Glamorgan Hotel for his appraisal from the coaches. The complex is festooned with builders, giving birth to a stupendous training facility for the Welsh team that is not so much state-of-the-art as creating an entirely different art form.

Presumably, he winged the appraisal? “Not really, they found a few things. Playing for Wales is so hard. Warren Gatland says that we have to empty the tanks after 80 minutes, we have to get back to the dressing room and then be unable to move. He says he will have no problem pulling the jerseys off for us, if we haven’t got the energy to do it for ourselves.

“The New Zealand match felt the hardest, the intensity levels are so high and that is when you feel most battered. You can be hammering away on the All Blacks line, but if they turn the ball over you go to immediate panic stations. In the Australia game, we offloaded the ball out of contact 16 or 17 times in the first half alone. It is brilliant to play in that style of rugby, but it is very, very demanding.”

Gatland’s Wales are on their way. “Warren gives you so much confidence. He has coached all those New Zealand players and he tells us that we are the most skilful squad he’s ever coached, which is fantastic to hear. But I wondered last week, after we beat Australia, if teams like New Zealand and South Africa would have been celebrating that one victory as hard as us. We know we can live with these teams. We have to start expecting to beat them.”

If time to savour is drastically short, then at least I can report some warming news from our man. He has a life. I can never resist asking the players of the modern era how they escape from the hammer of their sporting lives and am horrified when so many confess that a PlayStation is the chief distraction. Byrne has better escape routes. “If I have a day off, I’ll go up to London to see my girlfriend, take in a show at the theatre, have some food and chill out.” Hallelujah.

Furthermore, Byrne has a window to an even wider world. Sinclair Sellars, his girlfriend, is a lawyer with the QVC television channel and is a goddaughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr Universe and galactic film star, and now governor of California. Sinclair’s family were influential with Arnie in his early body-building days and the connection is still strong.

Lee Byrne is unlikely to approach that level of global consciousness, although it is almost certain that he will have a monumental part to play in the forthcoming Six Nations and with the Lions on tour in South Africa.

But it is important to remember that parts of Schwarzenegger’s career have been an act - I will leave it to you to decide which parts. Byrne is doing it for real and, as he and Shane Williams conjured last weekend to terminate Australian chances, it became obvious that Wales have a player of world excellence to savour.

Is Byrne the new JPR? Analysis by Stephen Jones

KICKING GAME
JPR Williams did not need one, he simply ran the ball back with his characteristic barnstorming runs. Kicking was the last option for him, although he did drop a famous goal for the Lions in New Zealand that helped to seal the series in 1971.

Lee Byrne is one of the finest kickers of the era in rugby. He has a natural power and length to his kicking, although his physique is not particularly massive. He can dictate field position with just one lazy swing of the boot.

DEFENCE
JPR was one of the hardest hitters in the game and he played in an era in which, for all his attacking excellence, the role of a full-back was still primarily in defence. He was rock-solid under the high ball; it’s hard to remember him ever dropping one.

Byrne is from a different era, one in which defence is far more of a collective. These days, the wings and full-back operate as a unit, standing in for each other. But Byrne’s footballing ability would have made him a fine defender in any era.

ATTACK
JPR running was a wonderful sight and he created the manual of attacking full-back play. He almost always entered the line outside the outside-centre, although he could also turn games by bursting up in a wide arc to take the ball from the fly-half.

Byrne has a far wider range of options under modern tactics. Normally, he will track a movement, looking for an offload to take him through the defensive line - as last week when Shane Williams put him through to score against Australia.