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North Melbourne skipper Jack Ziebell has suffered the double agony of re-injuring his hamstring and watching his team slip to a fifth straight AFL defeat.

The embarrassment of a scoreless opening quarter turned into agony for North Melbourne captain Jack Ziebell at Metricon Stadium on Saturday.

Ziebell's return after a fortnight on the sidelines against Richmond didn't last the opening term before he re-injured his hamstring and limped out of the game.

Not only did the Kangaroos not trouble the scorers in the opening term, their return of 2.11 (23) for the match is the lowest score at the Gold Coast venue in AFL history.

The Tigers would go on to claim a 54-point win, with Ziebell watching helpless from the sidelines as his team slipped to a fifth-straight loss.

"Knowing Jack he's got a lot of pride," Kangaroos coach Rhyce Shaw said.

"Got a lot of passion for our football club, as we all do, but being the skipper it must be pretty hard for him.

"It'd be wearing pretty thin on him I reckon. He wants to get out there and at this at this moment he hasn't had the ability to play too much of a part."

The Kangaroos also suffered setbacks with Cameron Zurhaar (calf) ruled out before the match and youngster Kyron Hayden knocked out following a courageous third-quarter marking contest with Richmond forward Tom Lynch.

The trio join a lengthy injury list for the Kangaroos which already includes another veteran in Ben Cunnington (back).

The 29-year-old has been sidelined since he too re-injured himself in round five but Shaw defended the call to bring Ziebell back into the team and said it wasn't a case of history repeating for the Roos.

"We're assessing all the time and I thought we did a really good job after the Ben Cunnington incident," Shaw said.

"Again I'll take responsibility for that, and I thought we learned a lot from that and we went forward.

"I think the Jack scenario is a bit about luck, to be honest."