Thompson’s men were denied the chance to play in a fourth consecutive grand final when they were thrashed by Collingwood in the preliminary final on Friday night.
But as he looks towards his 12th season in charge, the Geelong boss is confident his team’s era of success isn’t finished.
“I don’t think it has to be over,” Thompson said. “I don’t think we’ll lose too many players and we’ve some good young players who we want to play.
“We were one of the better teams [in 2010] and I thought it was a great effort to make the top four for the fourth year in a row.
“But it’s a bit of a reality check when you come up against a side who plays a first quarter like that.
“We’ve got to go back and maybe change the way we play a bit. We probably knew that at the start; we just haven’t had the total buy-in from the playing group, really.”
When asked what changes were needed, Thompson said the Cats needed to kick the ball more.
The Cats had 175 handballs compared to only 125 kicks in their loss to Collingwood.
“Clearly, we’ve been a side that throws the ball around,” Thompson said.
“At the start of the year, over summer, we tried to drill into the players that we wanted to kick the ball a bit more.
“It never worked. We probably never coached it well enough, but we got away with it against some teams.
“Against some of the teams that are going to play off in this year’s grand final it was not successful, so we have to change.”
