KEY POINTS:
It's hard to know whether to believe Graham Henry when he said the win was nice but not necessarily such a big deal.
The All Black coach might not have been quite so emphatic about the night in Limerick being all about the occasion if the All Blacks had not scored late in the piece to scrape home.
But they did, so he could shift the focus of the night and say that, really, it was about the education of a young side.
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"I haven't been in at atmosphere like that very often," said the All Black coach. "Shows the spirit of the Munster team and the geographic area it represents. It was a nice to have a win but I think the occasion was more important.
"I think we played a lot of the rugby. We tried to be constructive most of the time. It was a very young inexperienced All Black side. It was a very good experience for them to be under pressure from 25,000 people in the stadium. Very good for their rugby development.
"It was one of those games where we just had to hang in and hope we could score a winning try. But we had opportunities."
He was right to stress just how special the occasion had been. The Munster fans are world renowned for their passion. It is with good reason, they bring extraordinary colour and noise and then they show everyone else up by demanding a deathly silence when someone comes to kick for goal.
The noise was deafening when Munster sprung out their own haka, led by Rua Tipoki. Doug Howlett, Lifeimi Mafi and Jeremy Manning joined in and the crowd went ballistic.
Munster lived off that emotion for 77 minutes. They just couldn't retain their shape and structure for the full 80 and that left captain Mick O'Driscoll in a hell of a dark mood.
"We possibly deserved more from the game. To lose by two points to probably the best side in the world with 10 or 11 of our players missing ... you would probably take it.
"We were playing New Zealand so you don't need anyone to tell you who you are playing. It is a privilege to play New Zealand.
"You don't need any more inspiration to play these boys. We came so close but yet so far. Certainly for fat lugs like me you don't know what is going on all the time. All you remember at the end of the day is the result and we were beaten."
