All Blacks coach Ian Foster won't buy into widespread opinion that referee Mathieu Raynal's controversial decision to punish the Wallabies for time-wasting was the reason his side won their Bledisloe Cup opener at Melbourne.
With just a touchfinder standing between Australia and a famous comeback win, Raynal - after repeated warnings - reserved a penalty and awarded an attacking scrum in the shadow of the posts, leading to Jordie Barrett's match-stealing and Cup-sealing try in the final passage of play.
The Frenchman's bold call left the Wallabies faithful apoplectic and the rugby world in a state of overall bemusement, but Foster saw it from a different perspective, describing the decision as "clearcut".
"I thought it was very clearcut," Foster said. "They were delaying the kick.
"He said time off. He warned him, then he said time off and then he said to speed up, then he said time on.
"Then he asked him twice to kick it. I understand there is a contentious nature about it, but it was very clearcut from the opposition.
"I heard very clearly what the referee said, so I think we've just got to be careful. If people think that decided the test match, then you've got to go through and analyse all the other decisions in that game too.
"I thought the ref was very clear about what he did, so whether people agree or disagree, he certainly had a very clear mind about it."
Foster implied his side had been on the wrong side of the refereeing ledger, pointing to Andrew Kellaway's try that seemed to come from a forward pass, with a hurried conversion circumventing a video review, despite the official's best efforts to delay it.
"The other one that wasn’t clearcut was when Kellaway scored and the TMO wanted to look at what was a very suspicious forward pass, and yet the conversion was allowed to be taken," Foster noted.
"All I know was he was telling the guy not to kick the conversion, because they were checking something."
Perhaps even more egregious was Wallabies lock Darcy Swain's dangerous clear out at a ruck that resulted in All Blacks midfielder Quinn Tupaea limping from the field with suspected torn knee ligaments.
Swain appeared to target Tupaea's leg and was fortunate to avoid what a red card, instead earning one of his team's three yellows on an undisciplined evening at Marvel Stadium.
Foster wouldn't go as far as suggesting as much, but his disregard for the foul nature of the play was written all over his face at the post-match press conference.
"We've got a big issue with it," he said, after hearing Wallabies coach Dave Rennie's opinion that his lock had been harshly treated.
"We've got a player who's putting [Tupaea] out for nine months and you're not allowed to target legs on the side at a cleanout past the ball, so the rules are pretty clear."
Tupaea will undergo further scans to determine the extent of his injury, but Foster is clearly braced for the worst.
"It looked dangerously like an ACL, which is a very, very significant long term injury."
Foster had no further update on the status of captain Sam Cane and midfielder David Havili, who were both forced from the game early, after failing their respective concussion checks.
Any torn ligament would likely sideline Tupaea for up to nine months and Havili's recovery may open the door for Braydon Ennor or Roger Tuivasa-Sheck to appear in the Eden Park rematch.
At one stage, Foster and his assistants seemed in for a relatively stress-free second half, as the All Blacks bolted out of the sheds at halftime, capitalising on their two-man numerical advantage to score three tries in the first 15 minutes of the final stanza.
But of a blowout, the Wallabies bounced back into the contest, tearing through their 18-point deficit in the last quarter, and making their opponents pay for some uncharacteristically inaccurate finishing and weak defence on the outsides.
No.8 Hoskins Sotutu will probably regret his ill-informed grubber on the break with the posts and support beckoning, while centre Rieko Ioane may feel the same about his misjudged pass to Beauden Barrett with a clear overlap and a potentially match-sealing try on a platter.
While he admitted the team's inability to put their foot on the Wallabies' throats was disappointing, Foster was satisfied with the improvements and grit his players showed to battle through, and clinch their first back-to-back wins of the year.
"There was a whole lot of really good stuff in that game," he noted. "Earlier in the year, we weren't starting tests particularly well, now we're starting them better.
"I thought our intensity in that second half [was good]. We took advantage of a team that gave us some yellow-card opportunities.
"We'd like to think we'd finish a game off better than what we did. We got ourselves into a position to do that.
"Perhaps what was our strength two weeks ago became our weakness in that last quarter, where we let through a couple of tries with tackles that should've been made and weren't made. We'll go away and look at that.
"I guess what I'm delighted with is we set ourselves up for a last few minutes where we had to show some character, coming from behind in a game that we probably could've and should've had a bit more control of.
"The scoreboard was tight, and it had a lot of swings and roundabouts in it, but there were a lot of good things from us."
Join us on September 24 for live updates of the second All Blacks v Australia Bledisloe Cup test
