They say things come in threes. If the old adage is true, we will be celebrating a hat-trick of history-making 2022 Welsh sporting successes in the coming days.
The Wales football team qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 64 years, Wayne Pivac's side beat the Springboks on South African soil for the first time in the summer.
What price Wales, having not beaten New Zealand since 1953, finally bringing that 32-match horror run to an end this weekend?
READ MORE: Win free tickets to see Wales play New Zealand in Cardiff courtesy of Dove Men+Care
The odds remain stacked against, simply because New Zealand clearly have the wood over Wales, whoever is in charge of the men in red.
But without doubt this is Wales' best chance since our infamous game in 1978 when we had victory cruelly snatched away at the end following that Andy Haden dive from the lineout.
We lost that day at the Arms Park by just a solitary point, 12-13, but there was another reason which people tend to forget about, besides Haden's actions.
A few months earlier we had swept to the Grand Slam and I have not the slightest doubt that had we kept that team together, we would have been the ones to beat New Zealand. The talk of a hoodoo, which exists to this day, about having to go way back to 1953 would have been banished at that point.
Unfortunately three absolute pillars of our Grand Slam side, Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennett and Gerald Davies, each retired. Had they hung around until that autumn, they would have got us over the line. The jinx would be no more.
Gareth and Benny were respectively replaced by Terry Holmes and Gareth Davies, top players in their own right. I have a huge regard for the pair of them, Holmes himself went on to become a Walesa scrum-half great, twice a Lion. Gareth was also a Lion.
But at the time they were in the early stages of their development as international rugby players, whereas Gareth and Benny were fully fledged superstars.
I loved playing with Holmes and Davies, but there was only one Gareth Edwards and there was only one Phil Bennett.
Same with Gerald Davies, whose place was taken by Clive Rees. Again, Clive was a wonderful winger in his own right, but how do you replace Gerald Davies?
We still should have won, even without the Haden incident, but the fact remains that we didn't and our team are part of the unwanted history in this particular fixture.
So can it finally change this Saturday? Let's just say there are reasons to be optimistic perhaps more than at any stage since our game in '78. That, in the main, is down to the problems in the New Zealand camp.
Whichever way you wish to describe it, they are out of sorts.
Get your brilliant 48-page Wales at the World Cup preview special - it's a must-have historical souvenir
It's been a mixed bag of results in recent times, to say the least, including a hammering at the hands of South Africa, losing to Ireland and even a first home defeat against Argentina. They were highly unconvincing in scraping past Japan last weekend.
This is not the New Zealand we know. Some of the criticism they are receiving from the Press and fans back home has been savage. When that happens, you know it really is bad.
Questions have been asked of coach Ian Foster, they've lost their captain Sam Cane and veteran hooker Dane Coles for Saturday; Brodie Retallick is suspended.
These are key forward figures for Foster, they will be losses.
Wales need to build upon the confidence they took from the summer tour to South Africa and put a performance together that ensures they can take advantage of New Zealand's problems.
Take a leaf out of Ireland's book and believe. They too had a horror run of games against the Blacks, having never beaten them since 1905 - until the tide turned in 2016 when the men in green won 40-29 in Chicago. They've won four out of the last six clashes between the teams, five out of the previous eight.
It's amazing what a bit of belief and confidence can do. Ireland have a game plan these days suited to disrupting New Zealand, pick and drive, pick and drive, rolling lineouts which are difficult to stop. They seem to cause them more problems than any other side.
But Wales have had their own successes against Ireland in recent years, showing our players are every bit as good, even if when it comes to those black jerseys in front of us we invariably fail.
Will that run of bad fortune finally come to an end? There's not been a better chance in 44 years - but this is Wales versus New Zealand and sadly history tells us what happens in this particular fixture.
Let's hope this is the year the barren run is finally banished and Pivac's men come good, just as we should have done back in the '70s..
READ MORE:
