Star flanker Dalton Papali'i has played down the influence of French referee Mathieu Raynal in the All Blacks' 25-all draw with England at Twickenham.
New Zealand led by as many as 19 points with less than 10 minutes to go, but ill-discipline - including a costly yellow card - ultimately proved their undoing.
The All Blacks were penalised on 14 occasions - the same as England - in a test Raynal officiated to every letter of the rugby law.
The Frenchman is no stranger to applying the rules at his disposal, after controversially penalising Wallabies first-five Bernard Foley for time-wasting in the first Bledisloe Cup match, with the All Blacks scoring the gamewinning try from a resulting scrum.
Despite his constant whistle, Papali'i refused to blame Raynal for the All Blacks slip-up, instead bemoaning their ability to adapt in the face of repeated stoppages.
"I respect that ref," he said. "He's God out there, so whatever he says goes.
"We train ways of mentally dealing with that and that can be an area we can grow, but that game, there were so many momentum shifts in it.
"The ref was not being biased to anyone, he was making some good calls. We've just got to learn to adapt and handle ref's calls.
"I needed the rest - we like to play fast footy, I think it's a New Zealand platform, where we always want to play fast.
"Like I said, we need to adapt and when we do have stoppages, we need to think of the next moment and execute that moment.
"Things got frantic out there, there were a lot of momentum shifts, and we need to go back to the review room and say 'this is what happened, how do we find solutions?' That's the key."
As has been their Achilles heel all season, the All Blacks failed to close out a test match in an anticlimactic finish to their northern tour.
Papali'i admits he's disappointed not to come away with a much-deserved victory, but thinks the result will put them in good stead for the Rugby World Cup.
"I think we played some of the best footy we have done all year in that 70 minutes and [with] a yellow card, we usually have a plan, but we didn't execute in the last 10 minutes," he said.
"Just poor footy from us, basically, just being real, but we can take a lot of gains from that. For 70 minutes, I felt like we were in the game.
"We were dominating, the boys were connected out there, I felt the energy, everyone was on.
"We'll take the gains and also learn from the last 10 minutes. We always focus on making a good start and our downfall is probably letting teams back in the game with our discipline.
"We've identified that, it's something we have in moments, where we fall asleep for a little bit, and teams can really come and get us.
"It's hard having a yellow card. The good thing is we can learn from it and have a plan when something does happen like that, we can fall back into a plan we've already trained.
"It sucks getting the tie, but it's also a blessing in disguise, being eight months out from the big bang [World Cup]."
