As the Arms Park fell silent on a cold Saturday night in January — other than a rogue tenor in the North Terrace belting out a lengthy note to break the tension — all eyes were on Jarrod Evans.
The Cardiff fly-half had the opportunity to end more than a decade of waiting and consign Leinster to a first defeat in the Welsh capital since 2011. Yet the pressure hardly seemed to bother the playmaker.
He stepped up, slotted the kick through the uprights and wheeled away in celebration to cap a fine individual performance. During a period when it felt like English fly-half Marcus Smith was working with a team of scriptwriters to map out his heroics from week to week, this appeared to be those same writers doing a spot of freelance work for Evans that night.
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It was the high point in a season of few peaks in the Welsh capital. For Evans, it was the perfect way to shove any criticisms of his game down the throats of his naysayers.
The fly-half has been on the fringes of the Wales set-up since making his debut under Warren Gatland in 2018. When Wayne Pivac took over the men's national team, Evans was the first to wear the 10 jersey, against the Barbarians, while he also featured off the bench in the first Six Nations following the 2019 World Cup.
With his ability to fix defenders and pick out gaps in the defence complemented by him remaining square as a credible running threat, he seems like the perfect fly-half to orchestrate the fast-paced, all-court attacking game Wales were keen to implement post-Gatland. However, beyond a couple of appearances against Argentina last summer while Dan Biggar was on Lions duty, Evans hasn't really featured in Pivac's plans all that much.
The usual criticisms have dogged him about game management and his kicking game, but they sometimes, as evidenced by the all-round performance against Leinster, drift into the realms of lazy observations. The 26-year-old is a student of the game, while, as former Cardiff coach John Mulvihill used to wax lyrical about, he also enjoys his rugby league and draws upon the other code with a similarly eager analytical eye.
That love of the 13-man game is perhaps why his reading of picking passes on the gainline, either to a flat option or pulling it back, is so astute. Understanding how the speed of transfer and passing can kill a defence is a key component of Evans' game and something he continues to work on.
Of course, that attacking ability isn't in doubt. When Cardiff produce the goods this term, no doubt it will be Evans pulling the strings.
Instead, the upcoming season is more about cutting out some of the frustrations which would have naturally built up in the past 12 months or so. Ahead of last season, Evans committed his long-term future to staying in the Welsh capital despite interest from across the Severn Bridge.
Having turned down the likes of Gloucester and Bath, he started the season strongly. However, he missed the autumn Tests through injury before being overlooked for the Six Nations squad.
Now, being in and out of the Wales squad and getting very few consistent minutes as a result have often curtailed his rhythm in recent seasons. Evans has previously spoken about the stop-start nature of the season in Wales and how disjointed things can get.
However, that wasn't the case throughout the 2021/22 campaign, even if some at Cardiff, like director of rugby Dai Young, couldn't understand how Evans hadn't received an international call-up. Gallingly, that Leinster masterclass was nine days after Pivac had named his Six Nations squad.
However, the second half of the year didn't go so well at Cardiff as their disjointed Covid-affected season took its toll and the team effectively imploded in the closing weeks of the campaign. Evans was helpless to affect matters all that much, but at 26, he will be a key figure who Cardiff lean upon if and when the going gets tough once again this season.
How the eight-cap international deals with that added pressure will be interesting to see. The Arms Park's first-choice half-backs still feel youthful, but Evans and Tomos Williams have a combined age of 53 and a host of senior appearances to their names.
No longer are they the fresh faces. Instead, along with Lloyd Williams and Rhys Priestland, they'll be the ones that young half-backs like Jamie Hill, Ethan Lloyd, Ben Thomas and Ben Burnell, as well as the wider squad, will look to.
That's a big responsibility for Evans as Cardiff look to bounce back from a disappointing year. Furthermore, while Evans hadn't had any contact with Wales between last year's summer tour and this year's Six Nations (and that might still be the case) he is not out of the hunt for a Test place just yet.
Wales' fly-half cabinet has perhaps never been better stocked in recent times, but you only need ask the likes of Gareth Anscombe, Rhys Patchell and Callum Sheedy how quickly things can change, particularly a year out from a World Cup.
Anscombe is said to be considering ending his Wales career and moving to France next year, Patchell has been beset by fitness issues and Sheedy currently finds himself out in the cold.
With all that in mind, it is certainly set up to be a big year for Evans. If that cold night in January is anything to go by, it is a challenge he could thrive upon.
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