{"id":308615,"date":"2025-11-25T22:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308615\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:31:09","slug":"zach-merrett-steps-down-as-essendon-bombers-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308615\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Merrett steps down as Essendon Bombers captain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zach Merrett has stepped down as Essendon captain, agreeing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5nh83\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">after his attempt to quit the club in the off-season<\/a> it was best he step away from the leadership.<\/p>\n<p>Merrett reached the decision in the last few days after meetings with president Andrew Welsh, CEO Craig Vozzo and senior coach Brad Scott.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Zach Merrett\u2019s time as Essendon skipper has ended.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7afcf73fd2b702b9c7312340c54e5b3d6e7c7715.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Zach Merrett\u2019s time as Essendon skipper has ended.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>He told the players at a meeting at 8am on Wednesday. While Merrett had returned to early training in recent weeks with the first to fourth year players, the entire playing group only returned to training on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has been an absolute honour to be the 41st captain of the Essendon Football Club. Growing up, it was a childhood dream of mine running around the backyard in Cobden, and it has been an opportunity that my family and I are very proud of,\u201d Merrett said.<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you told younger me I would get to captain this club for three years, I would have pinched myself. It\u2019s been something I\u2019ve really enjoyed and loved doing. I\u2019ve really enjoyed being captain to lead so many great current and past players.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been weighing on my mind around who is the best person to lead this club and group moving forward, and I feel like I\u2019ve come to the decision that I\u2019m not the right person. There\u2019s so much optimism, excitement and energy at the club, internally and externally, with the fans, changes with the high-performance team, our new draftees, top-end talent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels like so much excitement and optimism and newness, and being such a young group, it is a great chance for a young leader to come in and grow with all the group moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you to the club, and to Scotty for giving me the opportunity to captain the club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach Merrett has stepped down as Essendon captain, agreeing that after his attempt to quit the club in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-308615","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\/308615","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=308615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}