A RECORD crowd of 74,000 will watch Wales take on New Zealand at the Millennium Stadium today (2.30pm).

That has always been the capacity of the ground, but the figure has been kept to 72,500 for safety reasons.

But the final 1,500 tickets have now been released, making it the biggest crowd ever to watch a match in Wales.

And this despite the firefighter's eight-day strike which began yesterday.

"We have kept seats back if there are duplicate ones on the market and if there are any emergencies, but now the stadium is fully up and running," said a WRU spokesman.

"The stadium is a very low risk fire threat and, in fact, no fire brigade is present at the stadium during matches.

"Fire stewards are always in attendance and the policy for today's match will be fire prevention, like people being asked not to smoke.

"Basically the firemen's strike will have no effect on us."

Some clubs have had problems selling their full allocation of tickets this week, but the spokesman said that if they had returned those tickets the Union could have sold them 20 times over.

One of them will be taken up by Graham Henry, the former Wales coach who is back in the country mainly to see is wife, Raewyn, who is the Welsh netball coach.

Henry, who was in Newport on Friday morning to visit 'an old mate', presented the Welsh team with their jerseys yesterday.

He did not wish to comment on the match, but his successor, fellow New Zealander Steve Hansen said: "Graham has still got a big part of Wales in his heart, especially with some of these players.

"It means something to him and to them. Some had a history with him after he coached Wales to back-to-back victories over France, beat England and South Africa for the first time.

"Graham was well known and respected by everyone."

Hansen is pleased with the Welsh team's preparations, and is mindul of the fact that Wales haven't beaten the All Blacks for nearly 50 years.

"It's a great challenge, it'll be toe-to-toe and I'm happy with the preparations," he said. "We can't change history and, at 2.30pm, 30 blokes will go out and try to create their own piece of history.

"It can't get bigger than this. It'll be a big crowd, the public think it's a big thing and you can feel the buzz."

Wales have got no special plans to deal with All Black giant Jonah Lomu.

"He's one of 15. We've got plans how we're going to play the game and we'll do it as a team," said Hansen.

He has had lots of support from back home - but not too much.

"I've had heaps of support from friends wanting it to go well, as long as we don't win," he said.

Hansen is aware the pitch may provide the biggest talking point, and it still looked in extremely poor condition for yesterday's final run-out under a closed roof.

"We can't have a dry pitch and grass," he said. "It isn't perfect, but I can't control it and we have to forget about it."