The sleepless nights are back for Mark Thompson.
Promoted from senior assistant at Essendon last year to the top job in 2014 following James Hird’s 12-month suspension over the club’s use of supplements, Thompson is once again battling the pressures of senior coaching.
The two-time Geelong premiership mentor was asked on Fox Footy’s “On The Couch” program if it was necessary to be obsessive about coaching an AFL team.
“I reckon the good ones are. That’s the problem,” Thompson said.
The Bombers are determined to put Hird back in charge in 2015, and Thompson is happy to make this his last year as a coach.
But that hasn’t stopped the 50-year-old constantly turning over ideas in his head about how to get the Bombers back on track this season.
“My mind is just full of what we have to do,” Thompson said.
“I’ve got to learn how to do that again, get away from it, because I’m just doing it 24 hours a day.
“I’m not sleeping that well, just because I’m waking up thinking about footy, what I want to do, how I want to play, things we have to do this year.”
Thompson quit as Geelong coach in late 2010 after 11 seasons. He was burnt out.
Sydney’s 2005 premiership mentor Paul Roos, who returns to coaching ranks at Melbourne this season after a three-year break, agrees with Thompson that you never stop thinking about the game.
“The main thing is you think about footy 24 hours a day,” Roos said.
“Whether you’re picking a team late in the week, or you’ve just dissected the game, you’re always thinking about what am I going to do here?
“That would be the common thread.”
Roos says coaches need to establish a routine of setting aside time to distance themselves from the game.
“It’s very hard to do. It was probably a lot easier when I was in Sydney,” he said.
“The other thing that maybe coaches don’t do enough of is at the end of the season take a really good break, a good three or four (weeks), so you’re actually separating seasons.”
For Thompson at least, in his final year of coaching, that won’t be a problem.