NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott and chairman James Brayshaw have chastised Kangaroo players for surrendering leads too easily.
Saturday night's loss to the bottom-placed Brisbane Lions was the third time this season the Kangaroos have been in front at three-quarter-time only to be overrun. Before the Gabba match, in which North led by five at the last break but lost by 14, the Kangaroos gave up a two-point lead in round one away to West Coast and a 13-point lead to Richmond in round five.
The club did not surrender a three-quarter-time lead at any time last season.
Scott was irate that Brisbane's two goals abutting three-quarter-time were the direct result of undisciplined 50-metre penalties. Defender Scott McMahon was a prime target, receiving a furious tirade from the coach for his failure to return the ball when instructed.
Brayshaw said the team's players deserved the negative assessment from the coach after their sixth loss of the season.
"I wasn't there [at the Gabba] but I suggest a burst would have come. It looked like there were some structural issues, I'm not sure if that's because players weren't doing what they were told," he told The Sunday Footy Show.
"When you're ahead at three-quarter-time against West Coast, Richmond and Brisbane, all teams that were out of the eight last year, they're games that if you're fair dinkum, you shouldn't lose."
Scott conceded his team had "stopped to a walk" in the last quarter, scoring only two behinds compared to the Lions' three goals and three behinds.
"It's probably a sign of where we're at as a team at the moment, that we just can't put those sides away when we should," he said after the match. "I'm as bitterly disappointed as I've been this year."
Scott's ire at McMahon and Scott Thompson, the other 50-metre penalty culprit, was exacerbated by the trend in the preceding round-nine matches of umpires punishing players for encroaching on the mark or not immediately returning the ball to an opponent. There was one 50-metre penalty given in both the Carlton-Geelong and St Kilda-Melbourne matches, while in the Port Adelaide-Fremantle match on Saturday afternoon there were five.
"You watch footy over the weekend and umpires seem to be paying quite a few 50-metre penalties for encroaching on the mark. We were aware of that," he said. "Scotty Thompson encroached on the mark, Scotty McMahon didn't give the ball back. They're 50-metre penalties. It's just undisciplined."
Scott sympathised that the two resulting goals, the third and fourth for returning Brisbane captain Jonathan Brown, skewed the outcome of Brown's match-up with debutant Kangaroos defender Luke Delaney.
The coach said the 21-year-old had done a "terrific job" on the league's most dangerous key forward.
Delaney, who was hurriedly elevated off North's rookie list last week to cover the loss of injured teammate Nathan Grima, was able to take consolation from his own performance despite the result.
"I was reasonably happy with my game, playing on the best in the business. It was always going to be a tough ask," Delaney told the club's website.
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