With big swathes of travelling support, a tightly-packed ground which puts spectators within touching distance of the action and a chill in the air that wormed its way into your bones, tonight had a very British feel to it.
With a scoreboard that never ticked over by any more than multiples of three, and a ball that saw far more air off the boot than it did through the hands, you could argue, if you were of a cynical mind, that it had a very northern look to it as well.
Aesthetics be damned, though, the British and Irish Lions were acutely aware that the time for winning new friends was long gone; the time to win matches was upon them.
So a local crowd that turned up in with near certitude that their Crusaders were going to inflict further misery on the Lions departed with barely a drunken whimper. Watching Conor Murray launching pinpoint box-kick after box-kick was a sobering experience for Cantabrians used to seeing their side counter-attack with impunity.
In 1971, a provincial game in Christchurch was the backdrop for what became a defining tour in Lions history.
