While those Essendon players cleared of an anti-doping charge took to the field at a wet ANZ Stadium on Saturday night with a renewed zest for the season, one man involved throughout the whole ordeal could only watch and ponder from interstate.

Mark Thompson was in the 3AW commentary box on Saturday afternoon, helping to call Melbourne's impressive win over the Gold Coast Suns. There was banter with his colleagues, including fellow The Age columnist and Dons great Matthew Lloyd, and pre-match with Suns coach Rodney Eade, whose role he fleetingly looked to have late last year when the Suns sacked Guy McKenna.

There were discussions of various kinds, with Thompson admitting it may have been a mistake to take a holiday in Mexico with limited access by phone in the days after the Bombers' best and fairest, for it could have cost him a coaching role in the league this year.

However, with James Hird hanging on, and then backed to return as coach, Thompson knew he could not remain at the club he had guided into the finals last season as interim coach in what was another tumultuous year.

"I had to be gone," he said.

Thompson was also poked about coaching again, and suggested, during the period when he had been linked with the Suns, that the AFL had intervened.

"I think certainly once we were charged, we were stamped a bit. I feel that, but proof will never come, I don't think," he said.

He also compared his time at Geelong, a club he had guided to two flags, to the Bombers, having joined the latter in great controversy as part of  a "dream team" coaching group alongside Hird.

"If I ever coach again, what I will probably do is probably find out who you are working for and make sure that if you do go and take that step, it's going to be a success," Thompson said.

"The people you work for is really important. I want to work for good people. That's the only time that I will ever work for anyone again is when they are good people."

Asked if the right people were still at Essendon, he replied: "They probably haven't had time or been able to put their eyes on the ball because they have been distracted in every way. I think the last couple of years it would have been hard for anyone to run a club, but I wouldn't have thought they had done a good job."

Thompson had worked alongside former Cats president Frank Costa and chief executive Brian Cook in reviving that club's fortunes on and off the field. While their relationship was strained when Thompson quit after the 2010 season, and he felt he had been used "as a bit of scapegoat" by Gary Ablett when he, too, left the club for the multi-million dollar riches on offer with the Suns, Thompson understands now how good things there had been.

"I have sampled both. On reflection, when you are inside Geelong, you probably don't realise how good they are until you leave and then you go and work for someone else. That's the way to run a footy club," he said.

That thought was strengthened when he chatted with his former premiership captain Tom Harley recently. Harley is now the Swans' general manager of football.

"I have spoken to Tom Harley over the last couple of weeks and he sees a similar sort of alignment to Geelong with Sydney Swans. They behave the same way," he said.

For the busloads of Essendon fans who ventured north for Saturday's clash, or those watching at home, that mattered little.

The so-called "Essendon 34" - including the 17 still at the club - were free once more to pursue their football careers.

"They are ready to play, they want to play. It's been taken away from them, now they are back," Hird said pre-game in Sydney.

Thompson is also free, but perhaps not in the way he really wishes.