FORMER Essendon coach Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson has admitted he found his first year away from the Bombers difficult while criticising the World Anti-Doping Agency for their treatment of the Essendon 34.

Thompson took up media commitments in 2015 after coaching Essendon through James Hird’s year-long suspension from the senior coaching role.

But like former Bombers rookie Hal Hunter, who has told how he fell out of love with footy after being involved at the club during the drugs saga, Thompson said he found it difficult to get back into the swing of things.

“Last year I struggled (to be away from the footy club). Watching games of footy was hard,” he told Fox Footy’s AFL 360.

“I love footy … but as a commentator it’s a different thing.”

Thompson agreed that his feelings were “beyond anger” at the suspension of the Essendon 34 by WADA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport, claiming the governing body doesn’t care about the players or the sport.

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“I didn’t think they found too much more evidence and they just tried to twist a bit of old stuff around,” Thompson said.

“(They) probably never really made their point but really, who cares?

“They don’t care about Australian rules I think too much. And they don’t care about the players … they put some people out of football for a year not knowing whether they were innocent or guilty.”

Essendon self-reported to ASADA and the AFL on February 5, 2013 and it took almost three full years for a final decision to be handed down in the ever-twisting investigation.

Thompson believes the length of time it took to make a decision, along with the treatment of the players during the process, was “horrible”.

“I think they’ve (the players) been treated really poorly,” Thompson said.

“They’ve had three years of hell and the whole year now, after three years of what they’ve been through, they’re suspended now. It’s not good enough.

“If this thing happened again — which it hopefully never does, but if it did — you’d hate to go through the same time lapse wouldn’t you, after three years then sentencing the players.”

But in the face of the saga, which saw Thompson fined $30,000 for his role as an assistant coach at the club, the former Essendon premiership captain just admitted defeat rather than fighting on.

“You just go and do other things,” he said.

“There’s no point — you can’t fight it. You’ve just got to concede.”

With many of the players he coached in 2014 still at the club Thompson stressed new senior coach John Worsfold could still get plenty out of the year.

“Young players are going to get opportunities aren’t they? So you just give them games and hold your nerve because they’re going to dish up some rubbish and they’re going to get smashed sometimes,” he said.

“He (Worsfold) has got to be a positive coach that gets his assistants around the players … to be really positive. They’re going to play bad football — so what?

“It’s about how they play, how they work, not dropping their heads and learning from it.”

Having spoken to some of his former players who are now suspended, Thompson said they can learn from 2016 as well.

“Especially the old boys, they shouldn’t give football a miss for twelve months,” he said.

“They’ve got to upskill themselves and if there’s any way they can learn from the year to be a better footballer, that comes from watching football. They should watch a lot of footy.”