They would have been entirely justified, when they won back possession after the 80 minutes were up, to have thought: "We've just repelled wave after wave of attack, we're 85m from their line, let's punt the thing out and be thankful we've escaped with a draw."
No way. I can tell you what the likes of Richie McCaw and Kieran Read would have been thinking.
It would have been: "I want this world record badly. Let's go for it and if we stuff it up and they score, we'll just beat them in Auckland and Brisbane to keep the Cup."
It's the sort of attitude that sustains them when they get in difficulty like Dublin last year, and which makes them such a hard side to beat. They don't quit.
Don't get me wrong, there'll be a tremendous sense of disappointment.
For long periods they were second best and on balance, when they review the game, they'll probably concede that a draw was as good as they deserved.
The penalty count was against them and they had discipline issues, most of them of their own making. That put numerical pressure on them for a quarter of the match.
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Yet when everything looked lost they still had the courage to try to win.
That's why I'm convinced they'll arrive at Eden Park in Auckland the happier side.
Australia threw a lot at the All Blacks. Just looking at the body language and attitude they took into the game convinced me it was going to be a tough night for the visitors, but the All Blacks stood up to it all.
They'll get to Auckland, review the tapes and immediately recognise several areas of improvement. Australia will arrive still not quite knowing how they didn't win the game. That can be deflating.
There's been a lot of talk already about referee Jaco Peyper and that fact alone suggests he was overbearing and had too much influence on the game.
I don't think you could argue that the All Blacks were hard done by. At one stage they conceded about seven or eight penalties in a row and were lucky not to have another man in the bin.
In the sequence before Australia were bundled out in the corner just short of the line, there were about three separate penalty advantages. The Wallabies played on and eventually advantage was called over and they were just short.
On any other day, they could have knocked the ball on, Peyper would have returned for the penalty and shown an All Black a yellow card for a cynical foul.
In one of those twists of fate, by being positive and trying to score a five-pointer, they ended up with nothing.
That's probably how they feel about the whole game.
The draw will feel more like a loss. The All Blacks might be ruing not getting the world record, but they'll know they have far more room for improvement.
