(This column first appeared on BackPageLead on November 3.)

Barely 13 months ago, Mark Thompson's status as King of Kardinia Park was assured. Having just led Geelong to their second premiership in three years, the quietly spoken mastercoach was set to receive the keys to the city, have statues erected in his honour and be the inaugural VIP chosen to provide his handprints for the new (and yet-to-be announced) Eastern Beach Walk of Fame. He was anointed Grand Master of Moggie Lodge and Knight of the Order of the Surf Coast, all at once.

Never again would Thompson have to buy himself a drink at the Lord of the Isles or Sawyers Arms and, if the fancy ever took him, he'd just have to give the nod and the city's fairest maidens would be at his side in a trice, popping peeled grapes into his mouth while fanning him with giant palm fronds.

His deeds in the coach's box, where he transformed an under-achieving team into one of the most entertaining and successful to ever grace a field, helped give a downtrodden city back its self-belief.

Yet all that appears likely to go up in a puff of smoke. 

With his totally botched handling of his departure from Geelong - which will one day appear in a PR manual entitled How to Lose Friends and Annoy People - Thompson has achieved the near-impossible: going from premiership hero to reviled turncoat in little more than a year.

It's not the fact he's changed clubs that is the issue. Football supporters are sufficiently aware of the ways of the world these days to not get overly stressed by coaches and players changing allegiances (unless, of course, that player is Gary Ablett).

It's the manner in which Thompson has ''gone about it'' - as AFL coaches and commentators love to say - which has invited scorn.

Two leading journalists, Caroline Wilson and Patrick Smith, wrote stories late in the season saying Thompson - serving the third year of a four-year contract - had been approached by Essendon officials and had even given the Bombers an undertaking he'd be joining them in 2011.

When confronted with these allegations by Cats chief executive Brian Cook and president Frank Costa, Thompson admitted he had been suffering from 'burnout' and wasn't sure whether he'd have the necessary motivation to complete the last year of his contract at Kardinia Park. But if he did decide to quit, he promised Cook and Costa he wouldn't be joining Essendon as coach.

So this was his first, and biggest, mistake. Because he'd either misled Essendon - whom he'd verbally agreed to join - or his Geelong bosses - whom he told he wouldn't be jumping straight into an Essendon job.

Thompson resigned before the end of the finals series. The speculation then reached fever pitch that Essendon had, in fact, secured their man.

Cook went on radio saying he and the club would be deeply disappointed if he took up a position with the Bombers for the 2011 season. Neil Balme, the football operations manager, admitted to being blindsided by Thompson's apparent double-dealing. 

The man who could do no wrong for almost four seasons as coach from 2007 has now been responsible for one of the great PR disasters in football. Listen to talkback calls, and read the comments to the Geelong Advertiser, and you can sense the mood of betrayal among Cats' supporters.

Quite why Thompson would jeopardise the close bond he had with his players, not to mention the club heirarchy and supporters, is anyone's guess. Is the prospect of being an assistant to a rookie coach at a middling club that much of a temptation that he'd threaten all that goodwill and all those garlands at Geelong?

Because now if - as seems certain - he bobs up at Windy Hill, his credibility is shot to bits. As is his reputation as an honest broker. 

And the keys to the city, and the drink cards at the Lord of the Isles, and the peeled grapes? Sorry, Bomber, but we'll be having them back now if it's all the same to you. And don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.