The whole "rub of the green" is just rubbish. Play the game down the right end of the field, make and execute your plays, win your lineouts and scrums, tackle the house down and get quick ball and play at pace is what was needed. Not some supposed genie with a whistle.
Well the saying goes 'you make your own luck', which is what you're saying, and that is partly true. However that's only part of the story.
We were decidedly unlucky to pick up too very important injuries in the first 20 minutes. That's very unlucky by anyone's standards. There was nothing we could have done to change that. That's just bad luck. One wonders how different this game would been had Retalick and Nonu both gone off injured in the first 20 minutes.
Secondly, whilst the kiwis were very good in the first half, on a few occasions fairly obvious errors were missed which should have allowed us to get some field position. So when you say "play the game in the right end of the field" again, those 50/50 calls will effect your ability to do that.
The referee of any game is just another factor/variable that teams have to contend with, such as injury, weather, etc. Sometimes those variables will favour you and sometimes they wont. If you're a good enough team you can overcome all of those factors, but they are always there and to an extent out of your control.
So the concept of "rub of the green" is certainly not rubbish