SO, ANOTHER has earned the title "premiership coach". It has lately become a less exclusive club as four new members have been admitted in as many years.

It's the first time such a rapid uptake has occurred since Charlie Clymo, "Checker" Hughes, Jack Bissett and Perce Bentley were inducted between 1931 and '34.

Mark Thompson's triumph flies in the face not just of established orthodoxies, but of the very record book. No coach had ever survived to win his first premiership in an eighth year at one club. No coach in more than 50 years had won a flag off a winning percentage as low as Thompson's.

Significantly, the coach whose platform to a premiership most resembles Thompson's is Norm Smith. This year's Hall of Fame legend was in his seventh year of coaching when he won his first flag. He had done a three-year apprenticeship with Fitzroy before taking the reins at Melbourne.

By the time Smith took the Demons into the 1955 grand final, his winning percentage over seven seasons was a modest 53.5. Thompson's win-rate stands at 53.3.

The rest, in Smith's case, is history: Melbourne won five premierships in six years, and he captured a sixth before he was done. It's an interesting historical precedent bearing in mind the talk already afoot of Geelong's potential for an era at the top.

Ten-year dynasties, such as Melbourne's under Smith, would appear out of reach under the draft and salary cap of the modern day. But as the Brisbane Lions have shown, it's possible for a talented group, with the right age spectrum and prepared to apply itself over the long haul, to enjoy a period of extended domination.

On the other hand, as the 2007 West Coast story has revealed, all manner of things can change in unpredictable ways. Injury, lifestyle issues, star player departures and more can quickly tilt the playing field. Opportunity must be grasped while its window is open, for it can quickly slam shut.

Those at Geelong who chose to persist with the coach of the previous seven years, in the face of the under-performance of 2006, can feel special satisfaction.

Seven years without a result can produce a lot of frustration. Troughs, when peaks are expected, are not good for senior managers in any line of business. Yet the Geelong administration kept its head. It asked itself whether Thompson had what it took to be a good football coach. It also questioned whether he might have been terminally damaged in the perception of his players after such a troubled year as the last.

The first question was answered in the affirmative, the second in the negative. They stuck by their man.

Through all of this Thompson had to retain his own self-belief if he was to survive. Although his boyish looks and gentle manner belie it, he was once described to me by a multi-premiership teammate as being particularly tough.

His survival and eventual achievement, in a role that brings the scrutiny and lack of sympathy that AFL coaching does, marks "Bomber" Thompson as a worthy premiership coach.

Three years ago on grand final day, Mark Williams publicly berated his club's major benefactor, thundering: "Allan Scott, you were wrong!"

The AFL's newest premiership coach must now feel similarly vindicated in the face of even more widespread doubt. Thompson might well say to himself that all of you who doubted were wrong. All of you!