Slamming the ball down in the right corner, Wallaroos wing Bienne Terita scored her first try of the Rugby World Cup and the first points in her team's opening match against the Black Ferns, silencing a raucous New Zealand crowd.
Minutes later the Wallaroos would score a second with Ivania Wong picking up a loose ball to run 60 metres untouched to dot it down. They could not imagine a more perfect start.
The ferociousness came before the whistle even blew, with the Wallaroos bringing out the famed boomerang formation before they approached the halfway line to stare down the opposition's haka, leaving fans cheering and ready for a scintillating performance.
Within minutes, the Wallaroos had built unrelenting pressure on the Black Ferns; constantly peppering at the black wall, asking question after question of the defence, and forcing several uncharacteristic penalties from their opposition.
A quick tap instead of a shot at posts in the 12th minute for the opening try demonstrated just how confident the Wallaroos were feeling, with Terita finishing off the slick move and fending off Black Ferns highly fancied wing Portia Woodman. She'd be over again in the 28th minute, finishing off a set move from the back of a rolling maul that saw the ball spread from one edge to the other before she'd step back inside Black Ferns fullback Renee Holmes and charge through Woodman for a second time, giving the Wallaroos an incredible 17-0 lead.
The 'blackout' of New Zealand fans were left stunned, it was perhaps the quietest Eden Park crowd many Australian fans had ever witnessed.
The barnstorming start had the pockets of gold fans around the stadium and many more across the ditch back home daring to dream that the unbelievable 22-Test winless run would finally come to an end. And in front of a record, sold out Eden Park in a World Cup.
Minutes into the second half though, it had them crashing right back down to earth.
"It's one of those things where everyone goes, 'oh, it's such a good game, you're so competitive', but we've got high expectations of ourselves and although we've been saying that we we're the underdogs and stuff like that, we definitely went in with the game plan, which we showed in that first 30 minutes," Wallaroos coach Jay Tregonning told ESPN.
"We're more than competitive with these world class teams and we're devastated we just can't finish off the games at the moment. "
Welcoming back sevens star Sharni Williams for her fourth World Cup, it was clear the influence the inside centre had made on the team.
Coming out firing from kick-off, the team played with aggression while the 34-year-old was keen to take the ball hard into contact, bending the defensive line on multiple occasions while she ate metres. Within 30 minutes of the game she'd already made five carries for 37 metres -- by the end of the match it would be eight for 50.
"[Before the tournament] I said I wanted to instil some belief and confidence in these girls and they definitely have," Williams told ESPN. "We knew that it was going to be a blackout, we knew that the stadium was going to set records. You know, 40,000 people in that stadium yelling and we had to silence them.
"Once again, just knowing what you're capable of, you have your training sessions where you're just bashing each other, that Test match Tuesday was insane. It was so good. So that instilled belief in us and that's what we're going to keep doing for this World Cup."
As everything seemed to be going the Wallaroos way, through some uncharacteristic Black Ferns errors, the tide shifted with New Zealand hitting back quickly before the break and after, with Woodman scoring two of her triple on either side alongside Joanah Ngan-Woo who opened up the Black Ferns score.
A double blow of yellow cards to Wallaroos captain Shannon Parry and Wong would soon follow in the 52nd minute, with Parry found guilty of high contact on Black Ferns' Sarah Hirimi through a TMO review, while Wong could have a case to question her 10-minutes after she was sent from the field for cynical play during a Black Ferns break down field.
It was a danger period Tregonning had pointed out before the game, and like their Wallabies counterparts, they couldn't withstand it.
"In fairness, two of them [Black Ferns tries] were against 13," Tregonning told ESPN. "It was one of those things where that type of stuff happens in rugby.
"The disappointing thing for us and what we'll continue to work on is our attacking breakdown accuracy, which gave them possession back, obviously we've got the ball we want to execute what we want to try to do and we can't do that if we're not accurate within our cleanouts."
As the score started to blowout in the final minutes and the inevitable came to fruition, the Wallaroos were left to reflect on what could have been and what was left ahead of them with Wales and Scotland next on the agenda as they aim for the quarterfinals and beyond.
"100 percent [we're confident we can win after that display], the scoreboard kind of tells us that," Tregonning told ESPN. "We always know that the flow of the game is gonna change sometimes and it's a matter of how we kind of arrest that back and we couldn't do that tonight, full credit to the Black Ferns, they're formidable opponent, but if we get another opportunity later on down the track in this World Cup, then we'll be in for the fight, that's for sure."