“We all thought he had a problem in that area, personally, but no one thought that it was any more than that. “A lot of people have reached out to try and help. I thought he had come out the other side and, obviously, he was very scarred by the ASADA stuff. “From Bomber’s point of view, there is only one person who can turn his life around. A lot of people are there to help him ... but he also needs to take some responsibility himself and say: ‘I am going to get myself right’.” Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Those close to Thompson claim he became erratic in his final season as Geelong coach in 2010. He joined Hird in a coaching "dream team" in 2011 and was controversially made caretaker coach in 2014 when Hird was suspended for a year by the AFL as part of its wide-ranging penalties. Thompson, who had been fined $30,000 by the AFL, is said to have become increasingly unreliable through the 2014 season.

While Hird said he and Thompson had done their best to protect the players during the height of the saga which publicly broke in February, 2013, he said the pair had not been given the support they had needed from the club. “They weren’t [offering any support]. The people inside the club at the time were not about supporting emotionally the people who were going through those times,” he said. Loading “The president left, we had three CEOs in the space of six months, we had HR people go. “It was really us — myself, ‘Bomber’, [former football department boss] Danny Corcoran, [club doctor] Bruce Reid and some other staff. We weren’t equipped to deal with it.

“Hopefully, we got the players through, but 'Bomber' and myself, we didn’t get through, and I know Danny has had his [difficult] times as well.” President David Evans quit after he had a physical breakdown in the Essendon dressing room after a night match against Hawthorn in July, 2013. Evans and Hird had been best friends but their relationship soured after the Bombers had opted to self report to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. Evans was replaced by Paul Little, who stood by Hird and even supported his bid to clear himself and the team through what was a failed case in the Federal Court. Chief executive Ian Robson quit after an initial internal club report into what had gone wrong during the tenure of disgraced sports scientist Stephen Dank. He was replaced by businessman Ray Gunston, who quit in protest after Thompson was to be made caretaker coach. Gunston had already formed a sub-committee to find a new coach. He was replaced by Xavier Campbell, who remains in the role. Sheedy, the four-time Essendon premiership coach who now works in marketing for the club, said the Thompson case had sparked concerns for the welfare of those players implicated in the scandal, including Jobe Watson, who was later stripped of his 2012 Brownlow Medal. "I think the supplements saga at Essendon didn't help him [Thompson], it definitely didn't help James Hird so I think that's going to play out in the next five, six years, particularly with the players that got banned and also with Jobe losing his Brownlow Medal," he said on The Footy Show.

"I reckon after 10 years it will be interesting to see what happens there." Hird returned to coach the side in 2015 but stood down in August that year when the scandal had ripped apart the fabric of the club. Thompson had a messy ending after the 2014 campaign, and has since admitted the saga weighs heavily on him. Loading Hird said the club's decision to self-report to ASADA "was the catalyst that kicked my issues off".

"People said we were cheating ... and didn’t care about the players. That cut me and I know it cut him [Thompson] as well," Hird said. “Football, rightly or wrongly, was our identity ... over time [the controversy] stripped away our identity, our value and our worth. When people do that to you, you are vulnerable to go down a path ... that maybe you wouldn’t have gone down otherwise.”

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