North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson, despite apologising for delivering a comment perceived as threatening to a TV reporter, “can’t give a guarantee” he wouldn’t do it again.

The premiership coach told Nine journalist Elisabeth Moss “your time will come” after she and other reporters were seeking comment when the allegations of harassment and intimidation from Kangaroos player Tarryn Thomas surfaced.

The aggressive nature of Clarkson’s comments saw him later apologise to Moss and two of her colleagues, and it’s understood he spent a period of the 45 minutes at Nine headquarters putting his own case about the incident forward.

But speaking with Seven on Monday evening Clarkson conceded he would act the same way if the situation was repeated, framing it as “standing up for your people”.

“You’d think with the experience that you would (act differently), and I’d like to be able to say I will continue to learn my lessons, but this has been with me ever since I was a kid; if I see something unjust or untoward, I’ll defend,” he said.

“And I saw something that was unjust and untoward, and I felt like I needed to defend our players and our staff - and I can’t give a guarantee that I won’t do that again in the future, because I think that’s important.

“Stand up for your club, stand up for your people. And that loyalty, whilst it’s a tremendous strength, sometimes it can be a weakness. And on that particular day with Tarryn, it was a strength in my support for him, but it was a weakness in how it was perceived outside the football club, that I’ve lost control.

“I haven’t really lost control though, because I was doing what I thought was in the best interests of the club and that was to defend what I thought was unjust or untoward.”

The former Hawthorn boss has been under the microscope since allegations of racism towards Indigenous player during his time at Waverley Park surfaced.

He believes, having tried to ignore the media since the detailed allegations were reported, the attention given to Thomas after multiple women made claims against him was “a wake-up call”.

“For certainly the last five months, I’ve probably deliberately tried to stay away from any media spotlight and attention, given we’ve been embroiled in this (Hawthorn) investigation. And then the Tarryn stuff broke and, despite how experienced I am in the game, I was just totally unprepared for the avalanche of media scrutiny that was going to come that day with Tarryn,” Clarkson said.

“I thought some of the manner in which the media were asking Tarryn and our players and staff was untoward with the way they were approaching our players, particularly given it was in the race of our football club and it was our workspace.

“We’re about to train and players and staff are getting doorstopped; I thought (it) was untoward, both before training and then post training.”

Door stops are a common occurrence particularly from TV journalists as they seek comment from players and team officials over breaking stories.