{"id":164623,"date":"2025-09-23T23:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164623\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T23:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:50:06","slug":"new-essendon-president-andrew-welshs-surprise-zach-merrett-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164623\/","title":{"rendered":"New Essendon president Andrew Welsh’s surprise Zach Merrett claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Essendon<\/a> has a new president, but it has done little to stem the Zach Merrett exit talk as the situation moves towards an inevitable breaking point.<\/p>\n

Merrett broke his silence on Brownlow Medal night<\/a>, stating he feels “a bit of shame” over the messy saga and “we’ll see what happens in the next few weeks” in comments that would have done little to quell Bombers fans.<\/p>\n

The five-time club champion is being strongly linked with a move to Hawthorn<\/a> after his highly publicised meeting with the Hawks.<\/p>\n

Essendon is holding firm, however, with incoming president Andrew Welsh<\/a> boldly declaring Merrett is not unhappy at Windy Hill.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Oscar Allen opens up on expected move to Brisbane<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think, with all due respect, that Zach is disgruntled,\u201d Welsh told\u00a0SEN Breakfast<\/a> on Wednesday. \u201cHe is yearning for success. He wants to achieve success.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has dragged our club in many games off his own back through mud to try and keep building on where we want this place to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not there yet and we\u2019ve got a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not disgruntled, he just wants to be successful. He\u2019s highly complimentary of our list and where we\u2019re going and what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to continue to embrace that and support Zach because it would be tiring.<\/p>\n

“He does it every week. Week, in week out he puts our club on his back and we need to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melbourne<\/a> great Garry Lyon then pushed back on Welsh’s comments.<\/p>\n

Lyon said what many in the footy world are thinking, that Merrett clearly is disgruntled at the direction of a club that has now gone two decades without a finals victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is disgruntled otherwise he wouldn\u2019t be meeting with another club in the manner that he has,” Lyon replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what you\u2019re saying, it\u2019s tiring and he puts the club on his back, but he\u2019s the captain of your footy club. That\u2019s what he\u2019s paid to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery leader in the competition would be feeling tired and at times be a bit disillusioned, but they don\u2019t go out and meet with another AFL club and have it drawn through the media in the manner that it is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essendon has a new president, but it has done little to stem the Zach Merrett exit talk as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-164623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}