The supporter in question got the fright of his life when Laidley turned around and went back towards him, but the Roo coach did not have bodily harm in mind.
"I just went back and said, 'come down, come and have a look at how much we're actually all hurting'," he explained later.
"I was sure at that point in time that all the supporters shared the disappointment - as we all do - and I just wanted to bring him down to say, 'look we're hurting as much as you guys'."
Despite falling behind by 20 points early in the match, the Roos stuck with the Saints all match and Laidley - while frustrated by the loss - felt his players showed tremendous grit to keep coming at St Kilda.
"I thought our effort was very, very good, you know we kept them to 10 goals … but we just couldn't finish off our work, so from that effort there I was pretty proud … because with the heat that we've been under, if we'd turned our toes up today there would have been more than you people in this room," he said to the waiting media after the match.
"I thought our effort and our contested footy was very good, but we probably didn't use the ball as well as we should've and that's the problem at the moment. There's no doubt our confidence is rocky - you can see that - but when we took risks (we were good).
"That's what we spoke about all week, 'take risks boys and if you make a mistake, don't worry about it, we'll live with it. We'd rather you make the mistake going forward rather than holding onto the footy'."
With the side in a hole at two-and-seven, Laidley feels the dogged determination he witnessed at Telstra Dome on Sunday is the key to turning things around.
"I'm going to go back and speak to them again now and just tell them how proud I was of just their effort and their grunt and if we can keep that and keep working hard we're going to be alright," he said.
"We'll keep working at it, they're a pretty resilient group and we're a very resilient football club, as long as they keep that, we can fix all the other stuff."
