Mark Robinson: Lonely Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson’s cry for help
THE Essendon drugs saga enveloped Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson’s life. He’d been found guilty of effectively being involved in drug cheating — two words which burned his soul. Last year he spoke about how he couldn’t let it go. It was a cry for help, writes Mark Robinson.
Mark Robinson
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MOST Wednesday nights after AFL360, we’d have a smoke standing at the car in Dorcas St, outside the Fox Footy studios, often below the mural of the legendary Ted Whitten.
It was pre, during and post the Essendon drugs saga, six years all up. But it was the latter three when “Bomber” became a friend rather than a coach.
He was a guest on Monday nights for the first three years, and for one of them loved the banter with Paul Roos about defensive and offensive philosophies.
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For the last three years, he was the deliverer of the “Bomber Diaries”, where it sometimes felt he was bantering with himself.
The Essendon drugs saga had enveloped his life and it seemed those last three years were the most destructive.
He’d been found guilty of effectively being involved in drug cheating — two words which burned his soul and, he feared, his reputation.
And he hated it.
Some nights, smoke in hand, he would be jovial and joking, half crazy with enthusiasm, and that was Bomber at his best.
Other nights, and they became frequent, he would be angry and disillusioned, crazy with rage.
He is a loner, Bomber, and perhaps became increasingly lonely because he believed that the club he captained to a premiership — and where he had returned in the hour of need to assist his premiership teammate James Hird — had betrayed him.
This was not death by a thousand cuts, as it felt through the drugs saga, but death by betrayal.
The saga had many victims, and Bomber was one of them.
On many nights on AFL360, he would rage at the injustice he felt. Why, he sneered, would he cheat? Why, after 34 years in the game?
They were TV moments, but raw and real and his anguish could be seen and somehow felt.
Smoke in hand, he’d rage even harder.
He quit the show at the end of last season, but not before one final announcement to the world. “It just sits in my guts and churns and it still does and it’s going to probably end up killing me because I can’t let it go,’’ he said at a sports forum.
“People tell me I’ve got to let it go, but I can’t. I’m quite bitter and twisted and I think I have got the right to be.’’
It was a cry for help.
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Smoke in hand, he’d talk about his marriage troubles, how he would hound the internet at 4am for information to help try to clear his name, and of people at the AFL and at Essendon who he felt had been treacherous.
There was and is a kinship with Bomber, a kinship based on a couple of blokes sneaking a dart, talking footy — one with a mountain of knowledge more than the other — and it was a kinship felt by many who have enjoyed his company.
But there was another side to Bomber.
People in football would’ve said on Tuesday they know Bomber. But if they were honest, they don’t really know him.
His boundless energy unnerved them because they didn’t know how to respond in front of him, or even understand what he just said.
In football terms, he was a “different cat” because sometimes he would offer unbelievable football intellect, and other times gobbledygook.
If he was a historical character, he’d be the Scarlet Pimpernel, adventurous and mysterious and living a life away from football which most people in his life didn’t know and maybe didn’t want to know. Friends says his perceived issues began at Geelong. He told people he wanted to escape and those same friends say something had changed in him.
He arrived at Essendon and friends could see that change.
He effectively got carte blanche at the Bombers and, at the same time, was not really accountable to anyone.
Some at Essendon feared he was dabbling in illegal drugs and that the supplements saga tipped him off the cliff.
Bomber would always deny he had a drugs issue.
Still, post-coaching, friends would worry about him and it’s believed several wanted some sort of intervention gathering. But Bomber would always say he was OK.
In recent times, Bomber was difficult to track down. Friends of 30, 20 and five years had dropped off, not because Bomber hated them, but because, one friend said on Tuesday night, he no longer knew how to talk to them.
His mind was a scramble of hurt and loss — his second marriage broke up — and blame, and in those situations, cowboy behaviour surfaced.
The search by police of his Port Melbourne home in January was confronting. The arrest and charges laid on Tuesday were horribly so.
Friends scrambled on the phone on Tuesday and the overwhelming question was: How did it get to this? How did bikies enter his life? How did they come to live at his house? How? Why?
To many people he’s a great person, Mark Thompson, a person who now finds himself in a seriously bad situation.
Understandably, others will have no sympathy.
The footage of him leaving the magistrates’ court on Tuesday night was harrowing for friends to watch.
It’s unbelievably sad.
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