Brisbane coach Anthony Seibold says he regrets sledging Sydney Roosters and Australian five-eighth Luke Keary last month.

Seibold bizarrely compared the media’s treatment of NRL star Keary to out-of-form Brisbane captain Darius Boyd, believing the former wasn’t under the same scrutiny.

“There is an Australian No.6 (Keary) playing for a team in Sydney who only made four metres last week and missed five tackles,” Seibold said on August 16.

“Not one thing was said in the media about that. For whatever reason (Boyd) seems to be an easy target.”

But the Broncos coach backed down from his comments on Tuesday night and Seibold said he tried to apologise to Keary over the phone.

“I do apologise to Luke. I actually rang Adam O’Brien who is the assistant there at the Roosters,” Seibold told Fox Sports.

“I rang looking for Luke’s number because I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful of Luke and I didn’t actually mention him by name.

“All I said was our five-eighth only made one run and we got the result. There was another five-eighth in Sydney who only got one run.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that he missed however many tackles that he missed that weekend.”

Keary has 25 try assists from 19 games this season, while Boyd has six try assists from 23 games.

“(Keary) is a brilliant player, but what I was trying to say was you don’t have to run the ball to still get your job done for the team,” Seibold said.

“That is one thing I do regret saying. I don’t know Luke personally but I asked Adam to pass on my apologies.

“It was nothing personal. It was me trying to protect our captain and our five-eighth.”

Brisbane (seventh) are all but assured of a spot in the top eight, while the Roosters are locked in to finish second heading into the final round this weekend.