AFL chief Gillon McLachlan ready to help Mark Thompson

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is prepared to help Mark Thompson as the former coach faces drug-trafficking charges.

Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson. Picture: Wayne Ludbey.

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is prepared to help Mark Thompson as the former player and coach faces drug-trafficking charges, while ­another troubled Bombers champion, James Hird, yesterday attributed Thompson’s predicament to the supplements scandal.

McLachlan said the league was prepared to help Thompson, despite the severity of charges, including the trafficking of ­ecstasy and methamphetamine.

“If we can help, we will,” said McLachlan, who was a key ­figure during the supplements saga, leading negotiations with Hird, Thompson and ­Essendon. The Bombers were eventually fined $2 million and banned from playing in the 2013 finals, while Hird was suspended for a ­season and Thompson fined $30,000.

McLachlan said it was apparent there had been a decline in Thompson’s wellbeing over several years. “No one likes to see anyone in the situation Mark clearly is,” he said. “If we can provide a level of support for him, I think we would do that. The legal process will play out and it will be what it will be.

“But in terms of supporting someone who has been a premiership player, captain and coach, and obviously over the last decade or whatever it has been, has had a decline, if we can support him, we would.”

Four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson, whose Hawks defeated Thompson’s Geelong in the 2008 grand final, yesterday said he was shocked by what had occurred. “I just hope that somehow, out of all of this, there is some learning and he can get himself back on the right track.”

Hird yesterday said he met Thompson on Wednesday, the day after he was charged and subsequently bailed at Melbourne Magistrates Court.

The dual-premiership coach is charged with two counts of trafficking ecstasy, one of trafficking methamphetamine, a count of possessing each drug and further counts of possessing LSD and a prescription drug without a prescription.

Hird attributed Thompson’s predicament in part to the toll of the supplements scandal.

“Football, rightly or wrongly, was our identity. Over time (the controversy) stripped away our identity, our value and our worth,” Hird said.

“When people do that to you, you’re vulnerable to go down a path … that maybe you wouldn’t have gone down otherwise.”

Hird, who overdosed on sleeping pills in January last year, struggled to cope during and after the crisis that led to 34 past and present Essendon footballers being banned from playing in 2016.

“The people inside the club at the time were not about supporting emotionally the people who were going through those times,” Hird said.

“It was really us — myself, ‘Bomber’, Danny Corcoran, Bruce Reid and some other staff. We weren’t equipped to deal with it.

“Bomber and myself, we didn’t get through and I know Danny has had his (difficult) times as well.”