"It's fantastic for our young boys to win silverware and medals and to win a grand final," Thompson said on arrival back from Adelaide at Melbourne Airport on Sunday.
"But I think we're all more pleased about the fact that our interstate record is not good, we were playing really good opposition, we were down at three-quarter time, it was a close game, a hard game and we came out winning.
"That's got to give us confidence knowing that wherever we play and whoever we play and whenever we play, we can win.
"It's in the memory bank and it's an experience that we've conquered and overcome. The players will use that in their experience going into the future - there's no question that will give them a lot of confidence."
Geelong had made no secret of its safety-first policy regarding the NAB Cup with several high-profile stars held back to ensure readiness for round one. With that in mind, Thompson admitted he was surprised to have gone all the way.
"We didn't put that much work into trying to win it, we've been fairly relaxed and low key," the coach said.
"It's basically been the players who've decided that they wanted to play as well as they have.
"Certainly last night we put a bit of thought into how we were going to play Adelaide, but again at three-quarter time you can say what you want as a coach … the players are the ones that did it and they played pretty well."
Thompson was confident his side would not suffer a letdown after the big win and pointed to their behaviour following the result as evidence.
"I think the group's a bit more mature than that," he said.
"I think even by the way we handled it this morning. It was amazing how we won, we haven't won a premiership for a long time, but they still went through their recovery, they were stretching and I thought the beers might have been out, but they weren't.
"We got back to the hotel and 95 per cent of them went and had a feed where, again, you'd think they'd go straight to the bar. They were very, very professional and handling it quite well."
