DANIEL Pratt is learning to play a new game. It is football, but not as he knows it. He is taking some time to learn it — too much time for his frustrated coach.

After the Kangaroos' loss to Adelaide in round seven, coach Dean Laidley expressed exasperation with his defender, whose crude methods had hurt the team more than the victims of the once-permissible tactics.

"We should have only been two goals down at half-time, which I was pretty pleased with, but then you get undisciplined Daniel Pratt, and he really has to look at himself because the coach is getting sick and tired of him giving away 50-metres penalties," Laidley said in a rare moment of isolating one player for criticism.

Pratt is a blunt instrument on and off the field and as such was unfazed by the public message, but he is aware he needs to make the change.

"I thought what Dean said was fair; we are all grown men, you should be able to cop stuff like that on the chin. There's been a couple of instances this year where I have copped a bit of criticism from him and even from other players from other teams, so you just have to accept it," Pratt said.

"I think one of the strengths and weaknesses in my game is playing with emotion and sometimes you can go overboard but there is no good playing with emotion if it is negative because it lets the team down because I know it frustrates him (Laidley) at times and I know it frustrates my teammates and it is something I have definitely got to hit on the head pretty quickly."

Pratt is an exponent of the dark arts of what is now termed "unsociable" football. It is football as sport but increasingly not seen as sporting. It is the game the Brisbane Lions played so well, to do everything to make the playing field as inhospitable as possible for the opposition. It is playing football like the Australian team plays cricket.

It is an approach increasingly being confronted by rule-makers and enforcers.

"It is definitely harder these days with the new rules — with speaking to umpires and things like that," Pratt said.

"You definitely have to be a lot more careful with what you say, so it is a lot harder from that point of view. But that is no excuse; the game keeps evolving, so the players have to keep evolving and that is a part of my game I have to deal with.

"It's hard to change because one of the reasons I got drafted was because of the way I go about things on the field and the niggle and annoying your opponent and that is getting harder and harder to do.

"If I can get in a bloke's head, it makes the job a lot easier but the umpires are becoming much more aware of those sorts of things — which is smart by them, they know who does what — so you can't go around niggling, elbowing blokes in the hip or whatever behind play to annoy them."

While it is a change Pratt accepts he has to make, he is mindful not to dilute his game to the point of becoming something he is not.