Having already called emergencies Ben Speight and Leigh Harding into the side, Scott was left with no option but to call on Hale - who had played for North Ballarat just hours earlier - to replace Daniel Wells who strained a quad muscle on his last kick of the warm-up ahead of the clash with Essendon.
The Roos ultimately went down by three points in a thrilling encounter after being threatened with a $20,000 fine if they brought a player into the side who had not been on their initial emergency list.
“I felt there were extenuating circumstances,” Scott said.
“We had Nathan O’Keefe ready to go so I asked the AFL if I could bring him in and they took 10 minutes to work it out and the answer was ‘We’ll call you back’. I did make them aware that there was a game going at that stage and that we were one short, but they eventually got back to us and said ‘If you play O’Keefe you’ll get a $20,000 fine’.
“No one should have to play eight quarters. I know the rules but I felt like there were extenuating circumstances. It’s not as if we were trying to get a tactical advantage.
“There can’t be any grey area in those rules but I’m not sure the system works perfectly at the moment.”
Scott said it was impractical to expect clubs to leave all three of their emergencies ready for action.
“Hale was our third emergency, but how many emergencies do you hold over?” he said.
“We’ve got this farcical situation where the VFL has a completely different schedule.
“We can’t hold them all over. We held two over, used them, then we had a third in Hale who got to the game from the North Ballarat game and they forced us to use him.
“They forced us to play him eight quarters or actually seven and a half by the time they made the decision.”
Despite his anger at having to add an exhausted ruckman at the expense of a running midfielder, Scott felt his side blew a golden opportunity to continue to press for a spot in the top eight.
“A lot of things that were out of our control didn’t go well for us but the things that were in our control like our ball use and the way we moved the ball forward was really disappointing,” he said.
“Full credit to Essendon - they got their win and they worked hard for it but, personally from my standpoint, we lost that game.
“It’s really disappointing to have opportunities and to let it slip.”
