"That got blown up out of all proportion," Buckley said.
"I'm sure the next time we play North it will be brought up but it's a non-issue.
"There's plenty of spin-offs from it from a football perspective, a tribunal perspective and the effect of the bump, but if I had my time again I wouldn't have made the comments given the hysteria that followed."
Thomas was given the all clear by the AFL match review panel following the incident, leading Buckley to observe that "the lines not blurred but they have shifted."
He said he would be coaching his players to expect more contact off the ball and to become more physical at the content, and suggested that players such as Nick Maxwell would be encouraged to take every opportunity to display their trademark physicality, within the accepted rules of the game.
"You make the rules and we'll coach around them," he said.
"Interchange, contact player to player and sliding in, we'll find a way to coach it so that we have the best chance of winning a game of footy with a style of footy that will best achieve that.
"It depends on the legislation, and we now have clear example of what's acceptable in the game. We are a club that plays the game hard tough and physical and Sunday was an example of that."
While Buckley has told his players to brace themselves for contact at any time on the field, he damned Reid with faint praise when he said his All Australian key defender had "a touch of the (Justin) Koschitzkes about him.
"He does lack awareness at times, and we saw that a little bit, but he's copped it, moved on and learned a lesson from it."
