Referee Jonathan Kaplan has no regrets for playing an extra five minutes of injury time in Saturday's Bledisloe Cup thriller in Wellington.
He even revealed the game should have gone for another 30 seconds after John Eales' dramatic penalty shot gave the Wallabies a 24-23 victory.
The South African dismissed the howls of protest from New Zealand fans and said All Black hesitation at the lineouts was one of the reasons for the extra time. Kaplan was bombarded by plastic beer bottles as he left the field. He was assisted from the field by All Blacks lock Norm Maxwell.
"There were three major instances for time added on," he said. "The first one was for injuries, there were three or four in the second half, the second one was for substitutions and the third one was for time wasting at lineouts where I felt the New Zealanders were huddling and not getting on with the game.
"There were two options, I could have taken a policeman's approach and free kicked them for time wasting or add the time on at the end of the game. If you count up the injury time, I've actually counted there was six minutes and play was actually five and a half minutes, so I don't have any problem with the time.
"I've got nothing to hide. I didn't make a mistake, I didn't cost New Zealand the game, I blew it as I saw it."
A referee for 17 years, Kaplan said consideration should be given for introducing an official timekeeper, rather than relying on referees to keep time.
"In South Africa we have a hooter system and a timekeeper and in Australia as well," he said. "We need to refine the system and keep the public informed as to what's exactly going on. There was ambiguity in the time left, the system needs to be refined."
All Blacks coach Wayne Smith backed such an initiative, but refused to use the timekeeping as an excuse for the loss.
"Any complaints about that are excuses and we can't afford to do that because we lost the game," Smith said.