And love it Steve Hansen did. For everyone else, it looked awfully like the All Blacks were fairly dire against a Scotland side which, while vastly improved, is still not top echelon.
It looked as though the All Blacks caught a few lucky breaks from the referee and were still in danger of losing until a heavy-duty bench was sent into action.
It appeared the All Black lineout fell apart; that they could not win much quick ball at the breakdown and that the players' decision-making was a bit shut-their-eyes-and-hope at times.
Hansen does not disagree with any of that, but he still loved what he saw. He still believes it was an important 80 minutes that provided the All Blacks with the perfect challenge.
He got exactly what he wanted from Murrayfield - a younger team full of players who rarely start, put under 80 minutes of serious pressure. Scotland more than did its part as he knew it would: its players tackled hard, they hit rucks hard, they competed at the lineout and they used the ball with a bit of skill and enterprise.
How well they played was not a surprise and that was kind of the point of the exercise. The All Blacks have a heap of players who have been exposed to intense pressure many times. They have a core of players who are probably the mentally toughest there has ever been.
But they have a group of younger players such as Charlie Faumuina, Sam Cane, TJ Perenara, Charlie Piutau and Malakai Fekitoa who have not experienced it quite so much yet.
They need to - because pressure is what the World Cup will be all about and, with the vagaries of injury and form, who knows who will be on the field at those critical moments next year.`Look, it was the perfect game for us,'' Hansen said.
''We have a lot of respect for Scotland and what we thought they would bring. We did our homework on them and we felt they were an up-and-coming side.
''For this tour we wanted to give all the young guys at least two opportunities and the USA was the first one and this was a big step up.
''We knew that and we could not have asked for a better game because they had to earn the right to win it. They had to stay mentally strong. They got put under a lot of pressure at times and they came through very well.''
The result becomes the only judge of whether a team copes well with pressure or not. And the All Blacks got the result they were after on the back of a 10-minute period where they kept Scotland pinned in its own 22.
Scotland will perhaps regret not hoofing it down the other end as the more they ran, the more the All Blacks came into the game and it was after a concerted period of better passing and better running lines that Jeremy Thrush was able to crash over and win the test.
Scotland asked tough questions and New Zealand, not elegantly or impressively, came up with the right answers. The manner, though, hardly matters. Scrappy is fine. Ugly is fine. Making mistakes was fine.
''Pressure does that to you,'' Hansen said on why he felt the performance was not one a thing of beauty.
''It did the same to Scotland too as the longer the game went and the more they felt like they were going to win, mistakes starting creeping into their game too. Pressure is a funny thing for young athletes. You have got to learn to cope with it.''
By Gregor Paul.
All Blacks v Scotland
The scores
All Blacks 24
Victor Vito, Jeremy Thrush tries; Dan Carter 3 pen, Colin Slade con, pen
Scotland 16
Tommy Seymour try; Greig Laidlaw con, 3 pen
Halftime: All Blacks 14-10.
