Although the Lions have limped home; tails between legs and performances rated somewhere between mediocre and woeful, their travelling support can pride themselves upon salvaging kudos for Britain and Ireland.
By universal consent, the Lions' fans were superb ambassadors for their countries. And, in contrast to Sir Clive Woodward's bloated squad, their success is due largely to the number present.
At the end of the tour, 25,000 rugby devotees from Blighty and Erin's Isle were believed to be in New Zealand, whereas three months earlier more than double that figure had been forecast. Then the Kiwi media warned of provincial towns being unable to cope with the influx and, much worse, stadiums inhabited exclusively by Lions fans.
The theory was that Brits clenching fistfuls of sterling would descend upon locals whose sense of opportunism exceeded their patriotism, buy their tickets and leave the All Blacks playing before hostile crowds.
This scenario did not eventuate and the earliest indication the volume of 'invaders' had been greatly exaggerated came prior to the Otago fixture, when an irate bar owner lamented about being advised to stock 120 kegs of beer but finding only 43 were needed.
It was during the build-up to the first test in Christchurch that the true situation became apparent. There were sufficient northern hemisphere oval ball aficionados to provide a carnival pre-match atmosphere, their team with significant though hardly dominant support and the domestic economy with a welcome fillip.