Rarely has coffee been replaced by champagne so quickly and so early in the day.
After a nervous few hours and seemingly endless refreshing of a live stream, Fifa President Gianni Infantino uttered the words football fans here and in Australia were desperately craving at around 3.45am New Zealand time.
There was a major heart palpation when Infantino prefaced the announcement by referencing the winning "host country" (singular), before eventually confirming a senior football World Cup was heading down under for the first time.
The 11th hour withdrawal of Japan and the trans-Tasman bid's vastly superior score to Colombia in Fifa's technical report had many claiming earlier this week the outcome was a fait accompli. But nerves began to fray yesterday with news the nine-strong European bloc was leaning towards the Colombian bid. Their votes, coupled with South America's four had Colombia just five short of the 18 votes needed to win. With seven votes in Africa and five in Central/North America, it seemed as though things could go either way.
NZ Football CEO Andrew Pragnell stayed up all night. Sweden-based Football Fern CJ Bott tried to calm her nerves by eating sushi in a local park. Fellow defender Meikayla Moore nibbled on salad in Germany waiting for news. Home-based players Annalie Longo, Erin Nayler and Hannah Wilkinson gathered in an Auckland hotel room wondering if the plethora of media commitments that had been arranged for them would come to fruition. As it happened, both Africa and CONCACAF threw their support behind the Australia / New Zealand bid and the margin of victory was eventually comfortable with 22 of the 35 eligible Fifa Council delegates ticking the trans-Tasman box.