Well, there was certainly a festival feel to that last night, before the match over 500 dancers gathered in Warrington town centre to entertain the crowds, before marching down to the stadium en masse in a great procession, fantastic.
There was a real sense of expectation, you could feel it in the air.
Inside the stadium, before the match, we had dance troupes, choirs, giant flags on the pitch, lots of cheerleaders, the army bringing the World Cup itself onto the pitch and the choir singing Jerusalem, nearly had me crying that and i'm meant to be a big toughie
The fans seemed to come from all over, it was a bit like the magic weekend, I met fans from Australia, Castleford, Hull, Hull KR, Wigan, St Helens, Samoa, you name it they were all there.
There was a full house in Warrington, and you usually only get that if Wigan are in town, in fact, the south stand seemed overcrowded, with people having to stand down by the touchline, and several announcements for people to get a few steps back, never seen anything like it.
There was two Haka's, done to some strange language, and that got a terrific applause from the crowd, both teams got an excellent welcome to Warrington.
Onto the match, I thought NZ were lucky to win, because there was a massive Samoan fightback in the second half, and it was Samoa who won the hearts of the Warrington crowd, who cheered for every move that they made.
I couldn't see the fuss about SBW, but Simon Mannering of NZ is certainly one to watch, he scored two excellent tries, but by far the best try of the night was Samoa's second, Three NZ defenders closed together to stop him, but he just burst through the lot of them right on the tryline and the crowd went bonkers, myself included, definitely a try to remember.
NZ might play better against better opponents, there was a sense that they were only getting warmed up and their best is yet to come, but at times there was also a sense that they were nothing special too, they have problems defending the tryline and at one point the crowd even started singing 'who are ya, who are ya'.
The scoreline might have been levelled but the Samoan full back was having trouble scoring his goals, otherwise the score would have been a lot closer.
Some argy bargy at times, but who doesn't love a scrap, there was also a lot of great runs which had the crowd cheering and some crunching tackles all over the pitch, one New Zealander got knocked out on his own tryline trying unsuccessfully to stop a Samoan try.
The replacement buses were all free, so no problems getting to the match, and overall a great match that will be remembered well for years to come, it was a great thing to host the world cup.
Get down to Derwent Park tomorrow, and wear your colours with pride, you should all be in for a great match, a festival in fact.
