Find Nugent's successor at home, says former coach Leigh Nugent had to be replaced as the Australian head coach for the team to rebuild, but the sport should not look overseas for his successor, former head coach Alan Thompson says. Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold confirmed that Nugent, who had received the brunt of criticism since Australia's disastrous London Olympic Games and the revelations of misbehaviour among the team, would be replaced and an interim head coach appointed before the national titles in Adelaide in April. Thompson said a new head coach had to be installed to "to really heal this team and move forward. We need to put a good strong leader in there to bring everyone back together again and get everyone on the same path. Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold announces the resignation of Leigh Nugent. But Thompson, who stood down in 2010, said Swimming Australia had given him the impression that it wanted a clean break. Thompson, now football operations manager at NRL club Canterbury, said he had kept a "keen interest" in swimming and believed that he could still help the team but was unlikely to seek the position after he recently applied for the role of high performance director but was not given an interview. Thompson said: "Whilst I think I've still got things that I could probably offer the swim [team] they haven't been sought in recent times and I think there is probably the mentality [from Swimming Australia] of moving forward which I can understand. I also think that sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards as well but that doesn't seem to be the ideas of the hierarchy at the moment. Nettlefold insisted that despite Nugent's previous public statements that he wanted to remain in the job, he had stepped down rather than having been sacked, as claimed by news reports. Nugent did not return messages from Fairfax Media. Nettlefold said Nugent would remain with the sport in a mentoring role for coaches. He's tired and he just feels it's time. We've got a whole leadership restructure happening in the sport ... and he felt it was the time to move forward and let the sport move forward," Nettlefold said. He's done a lot of great things and we want to continue to have Leigh in the sport. Thompson said Swimming Australia should appoint an Australian but must be careful not to weaken its squads around the country. He said Brisbane-based Michael Bohl would be outstanding, but that would remove him from one of the strongest squads in the country. He said another option could be to appoint experienced veterans such as Doug Frost and Bill Sweetenham in the interim until a full-time appointment was made. Meanwhile, senior Australian team coach Grant Stoelwinder said Nugent had been working on fixing the team's shortcomings but was a victim of trial by media. Stoelwinder said he was now concerned that the cleanout at the top levels of Swimming Australia would leave a void that would send the team backwards in the lead-up to this year's world championships. "The media and everyone was on what I would call a witch-hunt," Stoelwinder said. You wanted a scalp, it was a trial by media ... and I think it's a pity especially when we've got world championships trials in less than six weeks so the team's going to be thrown into more turmoil just as we're trying to rebuild it.