Somewhere in a secret location in Australia, or wherever it is that superstar AFL footballers go for a discreet holiday, Gary Ablett must be having a quiet chuckle.

After a year of being subjected to less-than-subtle digs from Mark Thompson about his unwillingness to sign a new contract with the Cats and having his loyalty questioned, Thompson followed Ablett out the door.

BackPageLead understands that Thompson's occasionally-public musings played some part in Ablett's decision to sign with the Gold Coast Suns. So you have to wonder what the superstar might have decided had he known all along that Thompson was about to depart the club.

Now that both have moved on, we'll probably never know the extent of the enmity between the pair, if there was any at all. It is also, in football terms, ancient history.

To dwell on it any further would also be a churlish, because Thompson was a magnificent servant of Geelong and his departure from the club today as classy as it gets.

Perhaps not since Malcolm Blight departed Adelaide at the end of 1999, has a coach left on his own terms and be told, with genuine sincerity, that he "is welcome back at the club at any time".

Thompson's was a magnificent stewardship. When he joined the Cats they were old and broke, when he left they were rolling in cash, boasting magnificent new facilities and most importantly, two new premiership cups in the trophy cabinet.

He made up what was known as the 'Holy Trinity' with chief executive Brian Cook and president Frank Costa but with Costa and Thompson now gone, these are challenging times for the Cats.

But it only takes a bit of management experience to understand that Thompson has pulled the pin on the Cats at precisely the right time. Geelong's list needs significant tinkering as it reshapes itself without Ablett and perhaps two or three premiership heroes who appear set to retire.

Geelong needs a coach with a plan for the next three to five seasons, which was never going to be Thompson's go because he was planning to leave at the end of next season in any event. The Cats will enter 2011 with a crack midfield, but with issues at both ends of the ground and in the ruck and it might need a hard head without loyalty to the premiership era to make some hard calls on the playing list.

Which is why despite the obvious temptation to promote the Thompson-endorsed Brenton Sanderson from within or bring back Ken Hinkley from the Gold Coast, there are two outsiders who deserve serious consideration.

The first is Chris Scott, who narrowly lost the Port job, but who shapes to get a senior job sometime very soon. The other is Mark Neeld, who coached the Collingwood midfield in 2010 after two years as the backline coach under Mick Malthouse. Significantly, it was Neeld and not Nathan Buckley, who was the senior assistant to Malthouse this year.

Neeld is a former Geelong player and still lives in the area. In the fabulous insider account of Collingwood's 2009 season, Side by Side, Peter Ryan wrote that Neeld still catches the train every day from Geelong to the Westpac Centre.

As for Thompson, the Cats all but conceded that he will be wearing the red-and-black of Essendon next season. As long as Thompson stays out of football for the next six weeks - and doesn't pinch any staff from Geelong - they don't seem to mind what he does next.

Thompson wouldn't be much help at Essendon until the new year in any event. New coach James Hird and the football staff will handle the list management issues over the next few weeks, while the fitness staff will map out pre-season training. Where a fit and refreshed Thompson will help the Bombers in 2011 is to counsel Hird, keep some composure in the coaches box when things get a bit hairy, and throw a few ideas at the coaching staff from left-field to keep them sharp and ahead of the game. He could probably do the job part-time while making his fortune in property development on the Bellarine Peninsula.

With Sean Wellman and Dean Wallis on the coaching staff, Danny Corcoran back in football as 'people and development manager' after running Athletics Australia and a brief sojourn with the Melbourne Rebels, Hird really is getting the band back together at Windy Hill.