Bernard Foley says he did not deliberately waste time in the dying stages of the Wallabies' Bledisloe Cup Test loss, citing crowd noise as a reason he could not hear the referee's instructions.
Referee Mathieu Raynal pinged Foley for taking too long to kick the ball into touch after the Wallabies were awarded a penalty in the 79th minute while leading the All Blacks 37-34 at a sold-out Docklands stadium in Melbourne.
Raynal subsequently gave the All Blacks a free kick, from which they won a scrum on their feed and scored a try to clinch a 39-37 victory after the full-time siren.
The refereeing decision left Foley and his Wallabies teammates stunned, with coach Dave Rennie wanting a "please explain" from the sport's governing body World Rugby.
"I wasn't trying to slow it down, but I was just trying to get really clear and concise about what we were trying to do at that next line-out," Foley told The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday.
"At the end it was very loud in the stadium, but there was no sense there was going to be a call like that."
TV broadcast footage showed Wallabies inside centre Lalakai Foketi — who had earned the hosts' late penalty — screaming at Foley to kick the ball into touch.
"I think Lalakai maybe got a reaction from the ref," said Foley, who was playing his first Test in three years.
"In my dealings with [Raynal], he asked to hurry up but had turned the clock off.
"He never told me he turned it back on or there would be other repercussions."
The finish to the match — which doubled as a Rugby Championship fixture — marred what had been an entertaining contest in which the Wallabies had fought back from 31-13 down to take the lead in the 77th minute.
The All Blacks' win guaranteed they retained the Bledisloe Cup, irrespective of the result in the return match at Auckland's Eden Park on September 24.
They have held the Bledisloe Cup since 2003.
The Wallabies have not beaten the All Blacks at Eden Park since 1986.
The All Blacks are in first place on the Rugby Championship standings with 14 points.
The Wallabies are second on 10 points, with South Africa and Argentina on nine ahead of their Test in Buenos Aires this weekend.
