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If Sir Alex Ferguson had been here this week, he would have called it "squeaky bum time", a phrase the Manchester United manager took straight out of Glasgow to describe those defining moments in a season.
It refers to those times when pulses quicken, sweat beads appear a
little more profusely and, we'll take Fergie's word for it, bums begins to squeak.
Graham Henry could muster nothing quite so descriptive this week but he would have been thinking it.
Against the backdrop of a poor loss in Melbourne and an unconvincing victory against a weak Springbok side in Christchurch, the All Blacks needed to make a statement of intent as familiar quadrennial anxieties began to surface.
Chief among concerns was the fact that the All Blacks have had an inordinate struggle just to hold the pill. An average of 15 handling errors a match does not a world champion side make.
So when news filtered back into the bowels of Eden Park 10 minutes before kickoff that the weather gods had intervened, those anxieties would not have eased.
It does it no justice to call it heavy rain - the tuba player had to be removed from the pre-match brass band for fear he would drown, such was the deluge.
It eased for the match but it was never going to be a night for the sort of slick back moves that now feel like a distant memory, though it was ironic that in the close quarter work, the All Black hands were as good as they have been all season.
It was instead a night for grizzled forwards and goalkickers, particularly in the 15 minutes either side of halftime when impressive referee Nigel Owens began to whistle with what the facetious would describe as gay abandon.
Here we can shelve some anxieties; New Zealand's tight five, epitomised by try-scorer Tony Woodcock, are far grizzlier than the Wallabies and Dan Carter's left boot was near flawless.
So those worries of the public will now shift to 30-odd players hoping their names will be read out at 1pm today.
You can safely assume the 22 from last night will be there. But a couple of the fringe players might not be feeling so comfortable, especially the 'Custom Street Six' who decided it was a sound decision, two nights out from the biggest test of the year so far, to while the night away in one of the city's fleshpots.
You can almost hear their bums squeaking from here.
