The ACT Brumbies fear poor refereeing is blunting their rolling maul weapon, but are adamant they won't turn away from one of their biggest strengths just yet.
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Coaches and players are privately fuming with referees who have failed to correctly police the maul defence.
Referee Angus Gardner missed a blatant offside call in the Brumbies' clash against the Melbourne Rebels last weekend, which potentially cost the Brumbies a try.
Replays have shown Scott Higginbotham clearly came from an illegal position, but despite being right under Gardner's nose he was allowed to tackle David Pocock with the tryline beckoning.
It's not the first time the Brumbies have felt harshly done by in maul decisions.
Larkham said SANZAR referee officials have admitted the Brumbies were dudded in at least two other games this season.
But all eyes will be on the man in charge - Matt O'Brien - as the Brumbies stick with their mauling game to try to overpower the Otago Highlanders on Friday night.
"We didn't get the pay out of our maul that we would have liked, we thought a couple of the refereeing decisions over the last couple of weeks have been poor," Larkham said.
"We've spoken to the referees about that ... had those mauls got over the line it could have been a different story [in the past two losses].
"The [outcome from officials' reviews] was that the referees had made a mistake, but there's not much you can do about it now."
SANZAR game manager and referees' boss Lyndon Bray admitted at the start of the season that the lineout defence rules were "quite complex".
"They're pretty ugly pictures, so we've basically appealed to our coaches that it's [disengaging from mauls] not a great positive technique to use," Bray told ESPNscrum before the season.
Gardner, Craig Joubert and Andrew Lees have made some howlers in Brumbies matches this year.
The results from those games have gone and can't be changed, but the Brumbies are hopeful SANZAR has now been alerted to teams trying to illegally stop their set play.
Until the referees crack down on it, opposition teams will tread the fine line and push the boundaries to try to get an edge.
It's up to the officials to take a stance against what is deemed legal and what is viewed as deliberate and cynical play in trying to stop movement forward.
"We spent a lot of time in the pre-season developing our maul and it does give us concern. We have changed our tactics over this last period of time," Larkham said.
