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AFL 2024

Opinion

Caroline Wilson Football columnist for The Age September 19, 2025 — 4.43pm

Zach Merrett’s desperation to escape from Essendon has blown up the shaky foundations of the David Barham-Brad Scott rebuild and resurrected the ghosts that have haunted the Bombers since the drugs scandal.

Not that those ghosts ever really died. This is a club that has long worshipped at the shrine of the individual so it is fitting that, despite the best efforts of the relatively new three-year regime, it has taken a controversial exit strategy by its driven but individualistic on-field leader to expose the cracks beneath the surface at Tullamarine.

Scott’s appointment as coach before the 2023 season was born in acrimony thanks to two of those individuals and legends of the

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