APART from the personal stuff about what made him put his hand up, the most pertinent comment Mark Thompson made on Thursday when named interim senior coach of Essendon was that 2014 would be a year of aiming high for the Bombers.

"It won't be a gap year," he said shortly after his appointment was confirmed.

Thompson has set a clear path forward for the Bombers next year, to continue the progress made in 2013 and push for the top four.

Neil Craig comes in to add further intellectual depth to the coaching staff and Simon Goodwin has elevated responsibilities.

"(The players) wanted a coach that wasn't going to just sit idle … and (will) give them the best opportunity to be the best that they can be," Thompson said.

"We're a pretty proud group, proud club, and we just want to build again."

Interim coaches in the AFL are quite common and they feature most seasons as short-term replacements for coaches who have been shown the door. But there hasn't been an interim coach in place at a club for an entire season since Alan Joyce stood in for Allan Jeans at Hawthorn in 1988.

Jeans fell seriously ill the previous November and the Hawks passed the coaching baton to Joyce, who was the club's football director, with the clear understanding it was a 12-month appointment.

Like Thompson, Joyce quickly determined that there would be no gap year under his watch. He felt the losing Grand Final to Carlton in 1987 was soft, so the following year, 20 years before the phrase was officially coined, he had the Hawks playing unsociable football.

"I wasn't daunted by it," said Joyce in an interview in 2011. "I met the board and they made it clear Allan had a contract with the club and would be coming back, so it was going to be for one year. It didn't worry me in that context."

And there was a clear illustration that he was given carte blanche to run the team as he wished. "The ingredient I thought we lacked the year before – the hardness – was in evidence every week. I was very determined to select players who played the way I want them to play."

With the best list in the competition and playing with a ferocity that bordered on manic, Hawthorn lost just three games for the year and beat Melbourne by 96 points in the Grand Final. Joyce, who had previously coached VFA club Preston as well as at state league level in Perth and Sydney, looked like a genius.

One difference between Joyce in 1988 and Thompson in 2014 is that Thompson is no coaching unknown. He led Geelong to its drought-breaking 2007 premiership, which was backed up with another flag in 2009. With president Frank Costa and chief executive Brian Cook, he was one of the leading architects of what has been one of the great eras of modern football.

That, and a playing list that sat inside the top four for most of the season just gone, sets Thompson up to try and emulate the feats of Joyce. He gave up the Geelong job at the end of 2010 because the fire in the belly was gone, but it would now appear to be back.

"I openly stated in the past that I didn't want to coach. Well, I think I really wanted to do it for (the 2014 season), and that's what I want to do," he said.

The Bombers have been through the muck in the past nine months – all of which they brought upon themselves - and they took their sweet time to find the stand-in for Hird, but given their intention to go hard in 2014, they would appear to have the right person in charge.