Thompson was still at Geelong at the time but came on board as the highest paid assistant coach in the game's history after telling the Cats he had lost the appetite for senior coaching.

'Bomber' remains the highest profile coaching casualty of the drugs scandal that has ended or at the very least ruined so many AFL careers.

Still Thompson's reputation as the coach who steered Geelong to two flags after a 44-year drought has seen him well sought-after for media roles. Thompson's ongoing determination that he repeatedly warned the club about its dangerous practices seems at odds with his insistence that the players had nothing to worry about. He will feel a sense of vindication too at the 'not guilty' verdict.

Another senior assistant with playing premierships behind him in Simon Goodwin has been earmarked to replace Paul Roos at Melbourne. Roos and the coaching interview panel reportedly had a cross by Goodwin's name until he won the Demons over, in part with his insistence he had grown and learned from the Essendon experience.

Goodwin is one who admitted his decision to take a first-hand role in the Stephen Dank injecting program.

Most of the other Hird assistants - the majority with lower profiles - are gone from the AFL altogether. Former premiership defender Sean Wellman quit the club at the end of the turbulent 2013 season to take up further studies. Development coach James Byrne, the one-time Adelaide Crow who also worked as Geelong and Collingwood also departing football to work in the finance industry.

Dean Wallis, another former premiership player who has had a chequered off-field coaching career, was not renewed by the club after 2013 along with strength coach Suki Hobson. The higher profile and originally suspended Dean Robinson has returned to study after settling with the club for $1 million last year.

Matthew Egan and Hayden Skipworth came to the club later but were at Essendon during 2012 were both interviewed by ASADA. They remain assistant coaches on the new line-up that includes three former senior club coaches in Neil Craig, Mark Neeld and Mark Harvey.

The lawyer who represented Essendon's lesser lights during 2012, Chris Pollard, describes most as "collateral damage."

"This is another case of where people in this industry with lower profiles are treated differently," Pollard told Fairfax Media. "There were a number of people the club just didn't want around anymore and they were just discarded.

"People like James Byrne and Sean Wellman had just had enough of it and were lost to the game. Others like Suki Hobson did not have her contract renewed and there were several like her. Some were hung out to dry. They AFL system rarely lands a big fish who has done something wrong."

Pollard said he remained concerned about the welfare of the 24 Essendon staff he represented. "The nature of the [ASADA/AFL] interviews was that they were like police interviews and a lot of the accusations being put to these people were most unfair. I wrote to the club but I never got a response."

The coaching team led by the untried Hird was put together by an inner-sanctum that included Hird's former close friend and then Essendon president David Evans and, later when he agreed to come on board as Hird's right-hand man and protector, Danny Corcoran.

The meetings on several occasions took place at Evans' home and also in the rooms of club doctor Bruce Reid.

Evans had ambitions to follow his father's footsteps onto the AFL commission. Once the scandal broke and it became clear to him that those ambitions had been destroyed, Evans worked to clean up his club and focus on the welfare of his players.

Now he is gone from the game and his friendship with Hird is non-existent after the coach attempted to further discredit him. There remains much good will towards Evans in the football industry but even he would admit to fatal governance errors largely brought about by his once blind faith in Hird and his team.

Paul Little, whose considerable wealth helped fund the original dream team, replaced Evans and has tried but failed to first discipline and even sack Hird. He has continued to insist the players were given nothing illegal although he does not know what drugs in fact they were given.

Corcoran, too, is gone from the AFL after being suspended for his role in the drugs regime but remains in the game as president of VFL club Sandringham. Club chief executive Ian Robson resigned midway through 2013 and now works in the A-League as CEO of Melbourne Victory.

Incredibly, despite his failure to oversee a safe working environment while acknowledging he knew dangerous practices were being carried out, Bruce Reid too remains at Essendon as the club's doctor along with Essendon's second club doctor Brendan De Morton. In 2014 Reid was admitted into the club's Hall Of Fame.