‘Should let him go’: Brad Scott ‘blindsided’ by Bombers, reveals he wanted Zach Merrett traded

Former Essendon coach Brad Scott wanted to trade then-captain Zach Merrett last year, but was overruled by club higher-ups.

The ex-Kangaroos and Bombers boss was sacked on Monday night following the Dreamtime at the ‘G loss to Richmond, which dropped his rebuilding side to 1-10 on the season.

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Scott believed the Bombers had his back after outlining multiple times, including this January, how difficult the 2026 season could be for them as they continued regenerate the list.

But he felt before he arrived, the club was desperate to bounce back as soon as possible, resulting in the necessary rebuild which he was leading.

Trading Merrett would have accelerated that, and while there was a level of dispute over the value of Hawthorn’s offer which involved three lesser first-round picks, Scott believed the club was better off dealing their captain.

Asked “did you agree with that decision (to keep Merrett)”, Scott told Seven’s The Agenda Setters: “No.”

He explained: “Zach has given incredible service to the Essendon Football Club. He’s been through multiple strategies, multiple coaches, made promises on multiple occasions.

“My view is always you invest in the team, you put the team first, and Zach found that really hard to do at the end of last year. I felt for him, and I felt for his family.

“I didn’t think he was being selfish - I thought he had been promised things over and over again, and he was at his wits end, and he couldn’t invest in the team any more. Now he certainly does through his actions on the field.

“My view was we should let him go, but the club’s view was we should keep him.”

Asked whether he felt it’d be the best thing for Merrett to leave at the end of this year, Scott said: “I do because I think it’s the right thing for him and it’s the right thing for the club.”

Scott was told on Monday night by president Andrew Welsh he was being sacked “because the losses were mounting up” and believed the club was feeling the pressure.

“I suppose I was (blindsided), yeah,” Scott said.

“We’re going through a difficult period, clearly. But it hasn’t felt any different to other weeks.

“I’ve been really well supported over a long period of time with the plan that we put in place.

“As I mentioned a couple of times, all the key people were part of that plan and building that plan.

“So it felt like business as usual to me that we’d clearly articulated the risks going into this season and the difficulties we may face, but we believe in the plan.

“I still believe in the plan, you know, and I’m committed to seeing it through and committed to the playing group and to all the players we recontracted as part of that plan.

“I’ve been in this industry for a long time. It’s not surprising because pressure does strange things.”

Scott said the Bombers are still “a couple of years away” from contending for the finals given “the demographics of the list”.

“At the end of 2023, I was really concerned on a number of fronts that we needed to make significant cultural change, and we needed to make significant list change,” he said.

“When we embarked on that strategy, I really thought these supporters are gonna hate me. They’re gonna hate me because it’s gonna be hard, and we’re vulnerable, and we may lose games.

“But I wanted to embark on a strategy that Essendon hasn’t embarked on this century.

“I knew the odds of seeing it through were slim, because history says that … why would you do this? The answer was because it’s the right thing to do, and I still believe it’s the right thing to do.”

The former Bombers coach also said the club has “in excess of $3 million to spend” on players having banked cash in recent seasons, confirming reports they had launched a long-term offer for Harley Reid worth around $2 million a year.

However he told the club not to do the deal, saying based on the trade it would require: “There’d be no Caddy, there’d be no Kako, there’d be no Sharp, Robey or Farrow.

“But we’d have Harley, and I just didn’t think we were at the stage where one player was going to make the difference.”

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