IN MATCH No.148 as coach of North Melbourne, the very best and worst of Brad Scott was on show.



The best proved he had the ability to be a coach in the AFL for a long time.



The worst left doubts over that, with his anger again embarrassing him and his club.



Against Hawthorn at Etihad Stadium last Friday night, Scott got his players to perform in the hard, uncompromising, nasty, unsociable, rules-pushing-but-not-breaking way that he so perfectly mastered himself in a 10-year playing career.

WATCH: The video that got Brad Scott into strife



This was the Scott that North thought it was getting when it gave him the senior coaching job in late 2009.



Until this match, Scott had been reluctant to fully push his players into a match with deliberate orders to be unlikeable to the opposition from start to finish.



There was no coincidence that such a directive came against the Hawks, which only a year earlier had embarrassed North through serious aggression that was at times over the top and rule-breaking.



North lost last Friday, but not because of Scott's demands to change the team's in-game attitude. The demands of his players to play on-edge worked. They fully obeyed his orders and played for him, as they have always done.



Embarrassingly poor kicking in front of goal was the reason behind the nine-point loss, a third defeat from the past four games.



Now, the worst.



He carried on like a sore loser post-match, even before he arrived at his press conference. Several people witnessed needless swearing and angry message-delivering.



Then, as coach of the club which is the most embracing of media, he ordered out of the rooms media that had been granted advanced access, and barred other media waiting outside.



He was already worked up to the point of frenzy before football department boss Geoff Walsh inexplicably relayed a conversation which had never happened about supposed umpire bias against Roos player Lindsay Thomas.



Even more inexplicably, Scott, without checking one aspect of Walsh's fairytale, derived from some innocent words from Jamie Macmillan, relayed to the media that the umpires from the game had acted on "pre-conceived" views relating to Thomas.



This column remains strong in its view that Scott should not be coaching North Melbourne against Adelaide tonight, that he should have been given a suspension by the AFL of one week, maybe two.



A personal fine of $30,000 and a club fine of $80,000 does hit hard, but not as hard as the stigma attached to an AFL-ordered suspension.



As an AFL coach, there isn't much worse one can say about umpires than accuse them of making decisions pre-determined by a bias against an individual player's style.



Clearly, in Scott's eyes and mind umpires do just that. It is OK that Scott does believe that. But it was disgraceful that he, as a senior coach, dared offer that view to the public.

There is a lot of Alastair Clarkson's persona inside Scott. That internal fire to succeed is largely why North selected him as the man to replace Dean Laidley after Nathan Buckley had said no.



Clarkson, too, has been involved in some very ordinary emotion-charged incidents. But when one is able to win a premiership in his fourth season as a coach, and then three more by the time that coaching career has reached 11 seasons, there is always going to be a greater tolerance, and allowance, of such poor behaviour.



That is not right but it is the way the world works, and certainly the AFL world.



Walsh should not have put the umpires issue into Scott's head before the press conference last week. A renowned hot-head himself, Walsh should have known far better. That he didn't will surely force the club to drastically alter the way in which these two men are allowed to work together for the remainder of the season.



It has already been decided that Walsh will have a reduced role at North next year. That decision should be brought forward to tonight's game against the Crows.



Scott's "rap sheet" of run-ins with officials and officialdom stretches back five years. In isolation, each issue means little. As a collective, it is a worrying pattern.



Scott is young and talented enough to be coaching for a long time. He is a good man.



But there will always be a caveat over his tenure until he can prove he can dramatically alter his ways in times of heat, pressure, disappointing match-day loss and adversity.



No football club will tolerate a repeat of the way he carried on last week.



Twitter: @barrettdamian