Hird’s attack at lack of help

JAMES Hird has revealed the extent of psychological damage the Essendon sports supplements scandal caused him and Mark “Bomber” Thompson, saying he reached out this week to his former teammate and coaching colleague in the wake of Thompson’s drug trafficking charges.

An emotional Hird said he and Thompson received scarce support from the Bombers during the drugs crisis that rocked the game.

And he detailed how he believed what the pair went through contributed significantly to their ongoing issues.

He told the Crawf and Hirdy podcast this week that he met Thompson on Wednesday — a day after Thompson was charged with seven offences including drug trafficking and possession following a raid on his home in January.

“That was the tipping point for a lot of us,” Hird said of the sports supplement saga. “My issues have been well documented and now he is going through something that hopefully he can get through and that it doesn’t go any further.

“We all thought he had a problem in that area, personally, but no one thought that it was any more than that.

“A lot of people have reached out to try to help. I thought he had come out the other side, and obviously he was very scarred by the ASADA stuff.”

Hird described Thompson’s situation as “extremely sad”, but said his meeting with him this week left him with the impression that the man who was a senior assistant coach with the Bombers during Hird’s time as senior coach was now “pretty determined to get himself to a good place again”.

“From Bomber’s point of view, there is only one person who can turn his life around,” Hird said. “A lot of people are there to help him ... but he also needs to take some responsibility himself and say, ‘I am going to get myself right’.”

Hird, who suffered clinical depression and reached a breaking point when he took an overdose of sleeping pills in January 2017, said he and Thompson had desperately tried to shield Essendon players from the pressures of the sports supplements scandal.

But he said the club’s hierarchy gave them little support amid a high turnover of staff and the swirling media focus.

“They weren’t [offering any support],” Hird said.

“We weren’t equipped to deal with it.”