NORTH Melbourne coach Dean Laidley has lashed out at criticism his club had failed to call for a Sydney head count in the dying minutes of Sunday's drawn game saying he did not want to be remembered as the "Trevor Chappell of football".

Laidley and his football lieutenant Donald McDonald are understood to have communicated their disappointment to AFL executive Adrian Anderson over Anderson's public comments that the Kangaroos had failed to address the Sydney error and therefore no action would be taken on the match result.

Both Laidley and his chairman James Brayshaw, who with club chief executive Eugene Arocca met Anderson and his AFL colleague Andrew Dillon yesterday, have made it clear to the league that they believed the club should have been acknowledged for their sportsmanship.

Laidley, who met the AFL late yesterday to receive an outline of the proposed draft concessions and plans for the 17th and 18th teams, asked The Age: "Can you imagine what this week would have been like for our club if I had called for a head count?

"It's been bad enough as it is. Had I asked Simmo (captain Adam Simpson) to call for a count I would have been run out of town."

Laidley and his assistants in the Kangaroos coaching box on Sunday noticed young Swan Jesse White run onto the ground but the coach said he had never considered calling for a head count and explained to Brayshaw after the game that he "didn't want to be remembered as the Trevor Chappell of football".

"Many years ago, I think in the mid-1940s, Essendon did it to us," recalled Laidley. "People still talk about it to this day. North Melbourne people never got over it.

"It still sits in the guts of our football club. It's affected our relationship with Essendon that they called a head count against us.

"I spoke to James after the game and he understood exactly the way I felt."

Brayshaw confirmed his coach's Chappell analogy and defended the club's apparent about-turn over the issue saying he had been disappointed with the wording of Anderson's finding which read in part that North Melbourne "had the ability but chose not to call for a count pursuant to the Laws of the Game".

The North Melbourne report on the incident asked the league to refer the matter to the AFL Commission and suggested the match result be overturned, a proposal that prompted Sydney coach Paul Roos to yesterday raise a public eyebrow over the Kangaroos' change of heart.

Three days ago, when the club had seemed almost accepting of the situation, it had not been aware of the Darren Jolly passage of play that led to Brett Kirk's behind which drew the scores.

But on Tuesday, the Kangaroos' football department examined a tape of the final quarter at some length.

It is even understood that North at one stage on Tuesday believed Sydney had 20 players on the field at one time and spent some minutes examining the tape of the drawn game before satisfying themselves that this was not the case.

The club's legal advice was that it had, at best, an even chance of having the matter considered by the commission and the final score overturned. It had also been advised that Sydney would have challenged such a decision in court on the basis that White had gone through the correct interchange procedure — the only basis by which a scoreline can be changed and a team not fined as Sydney has been.

Brayshaw said he remained disappointed that the AFL had failed to guarantee a rewriting of the head count rule before the end of the season.

Anderson has undertaken to review the rule which says that only a club captain or acting captain can stop play to challenge the number of players on the ground at the end of the season.

"We believe the rule is unworkable in modern football practices and should be changed immediately," said Brayshaw.ayshaw.