GEELONG coach Chris Scott has taken aim at “strange” umpiring in his side’s 25-point win over Collingwood, while Magpies defender Jeremy Howe has been sent to hospital with a fractured arm.

The Cats lost the free kick count 24-7, which left Scott bemused post-match.

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“I wouldn’t focus too much on the 24 part, but the seven part is very strange,” he told reporters after the win.

“We’ve had a few games like that this year. If it’s 7-12 it’s a ‘put the whistle away’ kind of night, but there’s a few things that I would describe as strange at the moment,” he said.

“I think we’ve been here before, haven’t we? It’s not the forum to be discussing these things but that’s not to say it shouldn’t be discussed.”

Scott said he didn’t plan to take the matter further, but admitted he was confused with how the game is currently umpired and hoped the coaches would be consulted at some stage in relation to the matter.

“I tend not to (take it up the chain). I’m even more explicit than I’ve always been on these issues internally. Our role is to understand the rules as well as we possibly can,” he said.

“I actually get offended when our players look at the umpire as if they don’t understand what the decision was, especially if the player is wrong, which happens a bit.

“But I get it in the moment, you’re kind of hoping that that was a deliberate rushed behind when clearly it wasn’t.

“The confusing parts arise when you think you understand the rules really well, explain it in great detail to the players and then you don’t see it play out that way.

“That’s the part that we need to straighten out, that’s really our only role. I think at some point it’s good for the people in charge at the AFL to consult broadly, especially the people that understand the game really well, which tend to be the coaches. 

“We’ll get consulted at some point, give our input, I’d imagine that part of that input would be that you just hope that the people that are in charge of that are spending enough time on it.”

The Geelong coach believes there has been a shift in recent times with several rules, pointing to holding in a marking contest as one area of confusion.

“There’s definitely been a shift, they deny it, but there’s definitely been a shift in holding in the marking contest. It’s really important you adjust with that, double down on the cues, what they’re looking for, are you giving them a reason to pay these free kicks,” he continued. 

“All the people in Geelong shirts here are really nervous at the moment, they’re starting to get sweaty palms because they don’t know what I’m going to say. But I will bring up one issue that is confusing for everyone, when you have an umpire 12 metres away with a perfect view and he gets overruled, that’s strange.”

Geelong tagger Oisin Mullin was tasked with nullifying Nick Daicos on Thursday night, Scott admitting his star tagger toes the line on occasion while going toe-to-toe with some of the game’s best players.

“It’s an interesting part of our game isn’t it, because holding in the marking contest should be the same as a ruck contest which should be the same as a ground level contest. I think we all know that intuitively that’s probably not the way it’s interpreted,” he said.

“I push back on the people that say ‘there’s a rule of the week and the umpires have changed’, they should change, exactly the same way that we change… the difficult part for them is that if we have concentrated on something, do we communicate it? 

“Because if they communicate it, they’re criticised for that as well… I think they tend to say no we’re just working as hard as we can on all of these things all the time and the rules haven’t changed. If they have, we’ll tell you.”

Meanwhile, Collingwood veteran Howe's arm fracture would likely require surgery.

“He’s unfortunately got a fracture around the same place he fractured a few years ago… hoping it’s on the minor end,” coach Craig McRae told reporters post-match.

“He’s gone to hospital to get it checked out, but the likelihood is he’ll probably need an operation. It’s probably too early to tell though until the surgeons and specialists have seen it,” he said.

“The things I’ve been told is it’s on the minor end, but it may require an operation. Nothing like the last one… we’ll know more in the next few hours I would’ve thought.”

Harry Perryman will also undergo scans on what McRae hoped is a minor hamstring injury.