North Melbourne AFL coach Brad Scott skipped a scheduled news conference on Wednesday to air his grievances with the league’s umpiring department.

Kangaroos assistant coach Darren Crocker says Scott is puzzled by a number of free kicks that were paid against the visiting team for head-high tackles and ruck infringements in last week’s loss to West Coast in Perth.

“He’s just actually having a meeting at the AFL so he has asked me to step in at late notice,” Crocker said.

Crocker said Scott was meeting with AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson and the league’s umpiring department.

“There were high tackles, we had four ruck infringements against Hamish McIntosh as well,” Crocker said.

“There were just a couple of issues that came out of that game on the weekend that he’d like to get some clarification on.

“We spoke as a coaching group about those issues and we’ve spoken to our playing group, especially in relation to those head-high tackles.

“As much as it was frustrating on our part, our guys need to learn to tackle with the right technique.

“A lot of those free kicks were actually there because … most of the guys who infringed were our younger players who didn’t go low enough and didn’t employ the right technique.

“It (the club’s concern) is the ones where perhaps they just drop at the knee and shrug the shoulders and all of a sudden the tackle becomes high.

“There’s a couple of Eagles players who do it very well.”

Crocker said the recent comments from Scott and Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson questioning West Coast’s duck-and-shrug tactics had brought an awareness to the league about a particular technique that’s being employed.