North Melbourne's winter of injuries could be about to get significantly worse with young star Jack Ziebell undergoing x-rays for a possible broken right leg in the aftermath of their 44-point loss to Adelaide.

In the third quarter, Ziebell dived in with typical abandon for one of many ground balls during a wet fixture, but emerged from the pack clutching his right leg and later struggled noticeably when medical staff assisted him from the field.

The Kangaroos were already lacking the likes of Brent Harvey, Daniel Wells, Ed Lower and Matt Campbell, while Lindsay Thomas added to the litany by limping off late with a hamstring strain.

Coach Dean Laidley was not optimistic about Ziebell's chances of escaping without any structural damage and was doubly frustrated to see a player go down as an indirect result of his own courage.

"He's on the stretcher bed to hospital and it may be a break," said Laidley.

"(His endeavour and attack on the contests) has been a hallmark of his since he came into the footy club."

The 'Roos also had their tactics questioned by Crows coach Neil Craig, who cast doubt on the legality of making a "tactical" game-day switch of midfielder Daniel Harris into the side in the place of tall David Hale.

That the move ended up helping the Crows - their tall trio of Kurt Tippett, Brad Moran and Ivan Maric were able to wear down Kangaroos lead ruckman Hamish McIntosh over the four quarters - seemed to make little difference to Craig's distaste for a change with no valid injury of illness excuse.

"I'm not sure on that whether that was an injury or a selection problem, and injury one I'd get (football operations manager) John Reid to question that because I'm on the understanding that that can only happen because of injury or sickness, not because of weather conditions," Craig said.

"That's something we need to follow through because I don't mind what rule we operate under as long as we're all operating under the same rules.

"That's not an accusation, I just want to find out; we would expect to see a medical certificate there.

"If it was an injury or illness decision, yeah we thought we could get an advantage there when we saw that, as we thought we did against Essendon last week."

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