New Essendon coach Mark Thompson is on a quest to win respect – and hopefully a premiership – for the AFL club next year.
And with his coaching passion back, the man who guided Geelong to the 2007 and 2009 flags hasn’t ruled out taking a senior job elsewhere after he fills in for James Hird next season.
While Hird’s 12-month ban over last year’s supplements saga ends in late August, the Bombers said on Thursday Thompson will coach them for the entire 2014 season.
But Hird has been guaranteed he’ll be back in the senior job in 2015.
Thompson, who played in Essendon’s 1984-85 premiership sides and captained the club to the 1993 flag, is desperate to rebuild the respect the Bombers have lost.
In August, they became the first club to be kicked out of the finals, and were also fined $2 million, while Hird and football operations manager Danny Corcoran were hit with bans and Thompson fined $30,000.
In Thompson’s eyes, that means he’s failed to achieve what he wanted when he joined Hird as a senior assistant, after walking out of the Cats at the end of 2010.
“The way people are looking at Essendon is not what I wanted them to see,” he said.
“We’re a pretty proud group, a proud club and we just want to build again.
“We want to build respect, we want our fans to love us.
“We want other fans from other clubs to know they’re a professional club, they play a fair game and they’re pretty decent people and I don’t think they’re looking at it that way at the moment.”
Thompson had declared in the past he never wanted to be a senior coach again and even after Hird’s ban was issued, expressed reluctance to step into the top job.
But he said his change of heart was not purely about helping his club in a time of need.
“They did want to know whether I was committed or not,” he said.
“I’ve openly stated in the past that I didn’t want to coach.
“Well, I think I really wanted to do it for nine months and that’s what I’m going to do.”
He said he wouldn’t be straying from the direction Hird and he have already set, only adding to it.
But far from just warming the seat, he says the players deserve the opportunity to achieve their best and a flag is the aim.
“We’re going to try to. Can we do it? We’re going to always try to. We’re going to try to do things better and we’ll see where that takes us,” Thompson said.
Essendon also named former Adelaide coach Neil Craig as head of coaching, development and strategy, while Simon Goodwin has been promoted to senior assistant.
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