AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- A diplomatic Steve Hansen believes rugby's law book must be simplified to avoid further controversy like that which ensued in the final minutes of his side's 15-all draw with the British & Irish Lions on Saturday night.
There was an uncomfortable silence at full-time at Eden Park after the historic series ended one match apiece, with All Blacks captain Kieran Read and Lions counterpart Sam Warburton hoisting the trophy together at the presentation.
But the attention soon turned to referee Romain Poite's 77th-minute decision in which he first awarded a penalty to the All Blacks for offside but then changed his original decision on the advice of the assistant referees and Television Match Official.
In what was a remarkably similar chain of events to the quarterfinal between Australia and Scotland at Rugby World Cup 2015, Lions player Liam Williams appeared to knock the ball into replacement Ken Owens in an offside position and just as Craig Joubert had at Twickenham two years ago, Poite's first instinct was to award a penalty to the All Blacks.
"Go back to the World Cup and the same thing happened, and Scotland missed out on the World Cup [semifinals] because they didn't use the video," Hansen said.
"So this time they used the video and then had a pow-wow, and what would have been good is just play on and we would have scored under the posts; that would have been okay. I'd have liked that. But we didn't.
"And his [Poite] initial instincts were that it was a penalty and then he spoke to his team of three and one of them suggested it was accidental. Again, it is what it is, it's happened and we can't change that."
Hansen had moments earlier tried to deflect attention away from the controversial decision, attempting to address Poite's call at the start of his post-match press conference and leave it at that.
But he was drawn back to it through further questioning and he may yet have more to say once the game's officials review the Test in the coming days. He did note his side's inability to finish off several excellent first-half try-scoring chances which would have given them a far greater lead than the 12-6 margin they enjoyed at the interval.
A long-time critic of rugby's over-complicated list of laws, Hansen urged the game's officials to act sooner rather than later so decisions like that from Saturday night were more clear cut.
"Well it's either offside or it isn't offside and if we all know it's offside then it's offside," he said somewhat cryptically. "You're right, there's too many avenues that you can go down; but that's not the ref's fault either, that's the rulebook. And the people that are running the game need to ask themselves do we need to make it simpler and my answer would be yes."
Lions coach Warren Gatland took a vastly different view to his countryman, suggesting the tourists themselves should have actually received the penalty due to Kieran Read's aerial challenge.
"I thought it was a penalty to us, I thought Kieran Read has run and jumped into [Williams]; I didn't think he's got any chance of getting his hand on that," Gatland said.
"So that was my initial thought, that he's hit the player in the air but I can understand [Poite] saying that he's competed for that and the ball's come and landed in Ken Owens' arms.
"And in fairness to the man next to me [Warburton], he's been quite smart and astute he's been able to talk the referee from a penalty into an accidental offside. We would have been devastated as a group if we had of lost the game from that kick off."