Coaching football, working long hours seven days a week, had chewed him up and wrung him out, so that he lost one marriage, then another, and for a time he was estranged from his children. By the time – through dreadful circumstances – he ended up coaching again at Essendon in 2014, he was damaged goods in the eyes of the most powerful people in the game. He did an unbelievable job, perhaps his best year of coaching, in context of the drug saga engulfing the club, taking Essendon to the finals. “They didn’t think I could coach,’’ he told me, which was code for: “I showed them.’’ Then Geelong coach Mark Thompson speaks to Cam Mooney in 2007. Credit:John Donegan A competitor of the highest order lurks within the usual, smiling Bomber Thompson visage, a man not frightened to go it alone, who started his own electrical business at 21 because he was already tired of being at his boss’s beck and call. But around the time he coached Essendon in 2014, everyone around him could see the warning signs: the bitterness (over the AFL’s handling of the case) and even regret (that he didn’t do more to stop the drug scandal happening). Essendon had their suspicions about his erratic behaviour even during that year.

So he stepped aside for James Hird to return from his suspension, took up some work (with Fox Footy and 3AW) and we sat down to do the book over 12 months, me trying to make it as positive as it could be, for it was meant to be the chronicle of a remarkable career in football, rather than a tirade over the drugs saga at Essendon. He did speaking roles, often travelling interstate, and at sportsmen’s nights in the bush, he would ask the crowd: ‘'Hands up those who think Essendon was guilty?'’ He sold a package of land at Armstrong’s Creek, near Geelong, but fretted as the deal fell over a couple of times. We talked about what he would like to do: one idea was to run an academy for footy coaches at grassroots level, because what he saw when he visited country and suburban clubs was light years from elite level preparation. It was with the people that he felt he belonged. He was uncomfortable in the media roles. “I feel like a hypocrite,’’ he told me. As for the book, though it was not his idea in the first place, he embraced it. He loved talking about pure footy and tactics and players almost as much as he hated the politics of the game and the back-biting and viciousness. It was the first time that he had set aside time to reflect upon what he had done (three premierships as a player, two as a coach). Mark Thompson cycling in Port Melbourne the day after his court appearance. Credit:Justin McManus He found his notes from the 2008 grand final: ''Hodge important/tag him, can’t drag him away.'' We had a laugh about that, since Geelong had kicked the ball to Luke Hodge all day in that game and lost. Then the 2007 grand final notes came out. One expression stuck out, for it was the mantra of those Geelong teams under Thompson, teams that transformed Australian football: 'RUN AND CARRY. KAMIKAZE.’

Thompson had kept loads of stuff. He showed me videos of Nathan Ablett, the former Geelong forward whom the club lost too soon, his greatest regret as a coach. His face lit up as we watched Ablett slotting a left-foot goal. Bomber the coach was the same as Bomber the player: neat, well-organised, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. He was empathetic, believing in giving people chances. He loved bringing people along, drawing inspiration from the proverb: "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Clearly he was an exceptional manager of people, all of which brings us to the contradiction of his own behaviour of recent years. It's the reason why his old teammate Tim Watson said: “It’s almost impossible to think that’s the same bloke.’’ He told me that he would never coach again. On one occasion, I said I doubted that, because I had come to the view that he needed it. He just laughed at me: “Haven’t you been listening?’’ I never saw him doing any drugs. We only talked about that topic once, and that was when he mentioned a person in the industry (whom he said he knew) had spread rumours during 2014 about him having a drug habit. I asked him how he felt about that, and he talked about how vicious the world was. He said it had hurt him, and we put that in the book.