You would not have wanted to have been in the Wales dressing-room when this game finished. Alun Jones was asked if the mood was sombre. “I don’t want to use any profanities,” the second-row forward replied. “In the past we lost [to New Zealand] but this time there was a real opportunity to win and we didn’t take it.”

It is wrong to suggest the game hinged on Jones’s brilliant 60-metre dash following an interception five minutes from the end, when Wales had just moved to within seven points of the All Blacks. “World-class players finish off opportunities like this one and I didn’t,” Jones said, his mood as dark as a seam of Rhondda Valley coal even an hour after the end of the game.

“It was probably my first and probably my last international interception," he added. "It could have been a lot better. Inside I'm not very happy with what happened. A kick did cross my mind. If I had gone on the outside [to the left and away from Zac Guildford, the All Black who tackled him] I probably would have got to the line, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

Had the big man not been hauled down 15 yards from the New Zealand line would Wales have scored, converted the try and levelled the scores? Probably, but this was not the only reason Wales lost the 25th game between the old rivals; their 21st successive defeat in the fixture. It is true Martyn Williams was penalised for a deliberate knock-on when he looked as though he was doing no more than attempting to put his arm around an All Black and that Martin Roberts was high-tackled by Dan Carter, an action that caused the foundering of another Wales move that might have led to a try. As it was, Carter was not sin-binned. But don’t forget the three decisions by the television match official that went Wales’s way and the mistakes Wales made at the kick-off at the start of the second half.

“We have to get better at making decisions,” Rob Howley, a Wales assistant coach, said. Warren Gatland, Wales’s head coach, put it another way: “We have to learn to hammer the nail home at critical moments. We are not doing it at the moment.”

There are many who believe Wales are moving closer to beating New Zealand and ending one of the most unusual records in sport. Look at the victory margins by the All Blacks in the past four matches against Wales: 38pts in 2005, 35 points in 2006, 20 points in 2008 and 7 points in 2009.

“This feels a lot closer to us than that game last autumn when we were 9-9 early in the second half as we were level with them this year,” Wyn Jones said. “Each year we get a step closer. Even if it takes two more years we’ll get the win one day and I hope I’m there when we do.”