"I basically told them it was a wasted opportunity," he said.
"We did a lot right, but we just didn't handle today as well as our opposition.
"We planned to give (Lance) Franklin minimal impact, and (Sam) Mitchell, and (Jarryd) Roughead, and I thought we did a lot of these things.
"We did a lot right. We had a lot of entries (into the forward 50).
"We obviously just didn't play quite as well as a team.
"It was the opportunities that we had – we just didn't make the most of (them).
"Funny things can happen in grand finals. It certainly happened today. There's no certainties in this business, and we were beaten by a better team on the day."
Pre-match planning wasn't the issue, Thompson said. It was the on-field execution.
"Some of the things we planned for worked, and some of the things that we planned for weren't implemented consistently enough over the day."
Thompson said he was worried that the players thought the game was simply going to happen, even after a second term that produced 1.9.
While he didn't believe they felt the pressure, he suspected they may have expected the torrent of behinds in the second quarter to turn magically into goals.
"You know, that's just wrong. To win premierships, you need to do everything right, and Hawthorn was absolutely spectacular today."
But Thompson denied that the Cats were on good terms with themselves after a record grand final win last year and a season that saw just one loss.
"No, I don't think so. I don't think we're cocky.
"On the day, we just didn't work well enough together. I think that's just been one of the special treats, the habits about our players and our team. We have been a good team, and I thought today we didn't play consistently well enough as a team.
"There were some people just going against what we planned to do."
