The Twitterverse went ballistic when Thomas – a player with a reputation for milking frees – launched himself into the air during the third quarter, his effort reminiscent of Netherlands’ footballer Robin van Persie when he scored with a diving header against Spain at the World Cup.
Thomas’ opponent in that contest, James Kelly, had actually appeared to have taken a hold of Thomas’ jumper, so the free kick may have been there anyway, but Thomas made sure the umpire knew all about it as he claimed the free and kicked the goal.
“I wasn’t happy with that,” Scott declared. “Whether it was a free kick or not, just play the ball, mark the ball. If you get infringed the umpire will pay it.
“We’ve worked on that and I think he’s improved over the last three, four, five years in that stuff.
“And, it’s pretty clear. I’ve said to Lindsay, ‘if you keep doing that the umpires will assume you’re doing it all the time, even if it is a free kick’, so I’ll speak to him about that again.
“I’d like some people to go and compare his output over the last three years versus players at other teams who play similar positions and I think he’d come up pretty favourably,” Scott added.
“But he probably isn’t spoken about in the same glowing terms because of these things.
“More important than that is the fact that I would hate to see Lindsay not getting free kicks when he’s genuinely infringed because there’s a perception that he plays for it.
“So we don’t condone it and he’s got to stop doing it and I think he’s been better but he relapsed on one occasion tonight.”
Scott said his side suffered ’15 minutes of madness’ during the second quarter as they gave away four goals through free kicks or 50-metre penalties.
Two of the goals came when Brent Harvey infringed Alan Christensen, with both incidents looking extremely soft.
But the fact off-the-ball acts were then all-but ignored after half-time made Scott suggest the umpires were told to lift their rating at the break.
“We are brutal on undisciplined rubbish,” Scott declared.
“There’s no place in the game and it cost the team, but I found it really hard with the vision that I had in the box, to identify whether players needed to be disciplined for it.
“I know we didn’t have any paid in the second half and neither did Geelong so probably the question asked as well, what was said to the umpires at half-time?
“We won’t tip into to umpires, we’ll leave that to the journalists and supporters and all that sort of stuff but as a team we’ve just got to control what we can control.”