An Open Letter to Zach Merrett

Dear Zach,

With all this news coming out in the past week I wanted to share my thoughts as a 30+ year Essendon fan with regards to the decisions you are making right now.

The first year that I was a member was 2014, the year you made your debut. What struck all of us when you began was the way you immediately adapted to AFL level. Your skill, composure and fight all stood out as Essendon progressed to an elimination final that they should have won.

I’m sure at that stage you never would have thought that that moment would be as close as you would come to finals success after 12 seasons at the Bombers. None of us did either.

We watched as you grew with the burdens placed on you as a 20 year old in 2016, when you stood up when your more senior teammates were rubbed out. Your efforts that year cemented you as an Essendon great and that win against Melbourne in Round 2 meant as much to Essendon fans as any finals win.

We watched as you developed into one of the elite players in the competition, winning Crichton’s for fun and always challenging for All-Australian selection. Whatever else, however bad things were, we always had you to be thankful for.

You clearly craved the role as a leader. We sympathised with you when you were left out of the leadership group in 2020. When Dyson Heppell stood down, we trusted in you to lead our football club and all that entails.

We understand that in your time you have had five senior coaches. You have been sold different plans for Essendon success on numerous occasions. None of which have worked. You have gone through more turmoil than most AFL players.

Over 12 seasons, I have never felt that you have let yourself, the club or the fans down at any stage. But, no longer do I have that belief.

Under other circumstances, many Essendon fans would not have begrudged you looking to move to another club. If you had been open and honest with your intentions, both to the club and to fans, this could have been managed in a much more dignified manner.

But by choosing to go the route you have, with clandestine meetings with other club coaches and leaking through the media, you have gone in a route that is going to result in you burning any goodwill you may have had and will in time make you a pariah at the Essendon football club.

Firstly, you had clearly been angling for years to become Essendon captain. That came with certain rewards, but also came with responsibilities. You may feel let down by the club. But if you reflect on yourself, have you done all you can to bring the best out of your teammates? Leading by example is but one aspect of leadership and it appears, from your actions, that you have failed in those other aspects.

Secondly, your actions have made many of us reflect on certain things from over the years and what it says about your idea of leadership. Your suggestion that list sizes should be cut so players like yourself would get more money. Your dissatisfaction with the club not offering contracts to your friends. The way you weren’t carried off after your 250th. All of these could be explained away at the time, but in hindsight suggest a disconnect between your view of yourself and your view of your teammates.

In Remember the Titans, there was the quote ‘attitude reflects leadership’. Maybe it was a coincidence that the game the players displayed the best four quarter attitude was the game that you missed. Then again, maybe it wasn’t.

Thirdly, the two captains that preceded you, Jobe Watson and Dyson Heppell, had far more reason to be disgruntled with the club and seek a trade than you. Both had the peaks of their careers destroyed by the drug saga. If they chose to leave, that would have been understandable. Both stuck it out to the end of their careers. Both are Essendon legends, despite the lack of success. They respected the club when they took on the responsibility of captaincy and upheld that to the end, whatever their individual flaws. It seems you will not.

Finally, there is how you have treated the Bomber Fans with how you have acted. We have watched you from your beginning. We have celebrated you. We have raised you to the pedestal of an Essendon great. We were talking about you as a top 10 player in the history of this great club. If you had led us to premiership glory, immortal status was there for the taking.

And yet, by doing what you have done so sneakily and without care for your teammates, Essendon staff, members and supporters, you have shown that all that love and respect was misplaced. If it was not for the eyeballs in screens and bums on seats from Essendon supporters, you would not be the well paid individual that you are. We have given you 12 years of respect. The least you could have done is give us that respect back.

And then there is the choice of coach that you have met with. A man who, when your teammates and friends were at their lowest ebb in the depths of the drug saga, decided to sink the boot in with that awful gesture. You can tell a lot about a person in the way they treat people when they’re at their lowest - is that the sort of person you identify with and want to play for? If so, maybe it says a lot about you as a person.

Some still think you can come back to the club from this. For me though, this is irretrievable. Your actions are not those of a captain. And not those of a player that teammates can support. No longer will Zach Merrett be considered in the same vein as other Essendon greats. When you win your likely sixth Crichton medal in a couple of weeks and are only behind Reynolds and Hutchinson in Essendon history, unlike the names around you, there will now always be an asterisk.

If you leave to go and win a flag and are successful, it will be one of the most hollow premiership medals in history. When you get up on stage to receive that medal, deep down you will know that too. And if you leave and don’t have success and miss out on any that Essendon does have, you will also never be able to live that down. Ask Brett Deledio and Ryan Griffin.

Your silence, other than trying to flog your clothing brand on social media, since the revelations tells us that it’s clear you’ve made your choice. And, as fans, so have we.

You’d want to hope that it’s worth it.

Ian Hume

Photo Source: Essendon Football Club