Sydney coach John Longmire has urged AFL coaches to avoid “finger pointing” after his Richmond counterpart Damien Hardwick apologised to him for post-match comments over the weekend.

After Richmond ground out a 4.10 (34) to 3.8 (26) AFL win over Sydney at the Gabba on Sunday, Hardwick complained about what he saw as overly defensive tactics in the match, saying: “There’s not much I can do; we’re attacking and we’ve got 75,000 people in our forward 50”.

Longmire rejected the criticism, pointing out his team had not played an extra defender and that Richmond bring another player up around the ball.

“I’m not sure it’s my role to walk up to Damien’s coaches’ box and knock on the door and say ‘what would you like us to do?’,” Longmire said.

“I thought the coaches were really collegiate and I was hoping that would still be the case.

“But we’ve got to be careful as an industry (that) we don’t drop into this habit of potting other people and finger pointing.

“It’s a bit of a challenging time for all of us and we need to take a deep breath and help each other through this.

“Damien called me straight after the game and apologised for the comments, which I appreciated. But as I said to Damien they are out there.”

Longmire has a policy of not commenting critically on other clubs and urged other coaches to take the same approach.

“We’ve just slipped into a bit of a habit of making strong comments on other teams and it’s unnecessary,” he said.

“I find it difficult enough to coach our own club. I’ve got enough on my plate looking after our own players without giving advice to others.”