North Melbourne tagger Luke McDonald has apologised to Essendon’s Conor McKenna for his on-field COVID-19 taunt but coach Rhyce Shaw doesn’t expect any sanction from the AFL.

As players scuffled at the end of the first quarter of Saturday night’s game, McDonald turned to McKenna and dramatically covered his face – seemingly referencing the Bomber’s positive COVID-19 test.

“We’ve dealt with that internally – Luke’s given Conor a call and from our perspective it wasn’t necessary,” Shaw told reporters on Monday.

“It’s a bad look and considering all the things that are going on around the world at the moment and even more specifically in Melbourne, we just don’t accept that type of behaviour.

“(Luke) apologised for that and he understands what that looks like.”

McKenna tested positive for coronavirus in late June and missed one game while quarantined, before returning a series of negative tests.

Saturday night’s game was the Irishman’s first AFL appearance this season.

Shaw said McDonald was “disappointed” in himself but the Kangaroos were comfortable with where the matter sat after the tagger’s apology and didn’t expect further sanction from the AFL.

“He’s disappointed in his own actions and we had a really good chat about it and we addressed it straight away as soon as we felt was the right time,” Shaw said.

“He did that the next morning and we put it to bed pretty quickly and Conor was really, really good about it in respect to the phone call from Luke.”