"Standing at over 200 centimetres and at full stretch, who knows how tall that is? But when he launches at the ball he's almost impossible to stop, so a lot of the tactics go into trying to stop him doing that. Now, whether that's legal or not, that's a question for the umpires".

Scott was surprised that umpires paid frees for blocking in the win over Brisbane – just none of them to Brown.

"I think at times, and there were a number of free kicks paid for blocking in marking contests – probably to both sides and Ben wasn't on the receiving end of those," he said.

"He was a little bit frustrated, to be honest, yesterday, and it's the first time I've seen him sort of even glance in the umpire's direction; he usually just gets on with it, and that's our instruction to him: 'Mate, at times you're going to be infringed and not have a free kick paid for you, but you've just got to keep launching at the ball.'

"If he does that he's hard to defend and he either marks it or gets infringed, so he's just got to persist with that and let the umpires do their job."

The Clarkson comments on defensive blocking tactics and meeting with McLachlan angered the Swans, who believed Hawthorn employed the same tactics they complained about in other teams.

On Friday night Rampe was heard on the umpire's microphone complaining to the umpire that a free kick paid against him was because of Clarkson's complaint, which singled him out for blocking or wrapping his arms around players.

"You've got your arms around him and you're preventing him from leading," the umpire said to Rampe.

The Swans defender replied: "Clarko would be happy with that. Well done. Did you have a coffee with him too?"

The day after he made his comments in the post-match interview from the Sydney-Hawthorn game, Clarkson raised Rampe and Brown in a 3AW interview.

"I watched a game last week where Dane Rampe's playing on Ben Brown … there's only one way that he can actually defend in that manner, he's not actually defending the ball, he's defending the body," Clarkson said.

Last week commentators Wayne Carey and Matthew Richardson observed similar blocking and chopping tactics used against Collingwood tall forward Mason Cox.