Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Football
Netball
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
"Not for trade": Essendon President speaks on wantaway captain
SEN • September 12th, 2025 6:58 pm
Essendon president Dave Barham has addressed rumours following a tumultuous week at the football club.
With ongoing talks of club captain Zach Merrett seeking a move elsewhere, alongside the likes of wantaway star Jordan Ridley and the confirmed departure of ruckman Sam Draper, the Bombers are facing the prospect of a heavily compromised list ahead of 2026.
Speaking on the matters for the first time, Barham formatted a letter to Essendon members.
The letter reads as follows:
Dear Members,
I am writing to you all today following the conclusion of our 2025 AFL Season and to address the recent industry speculation that surrounds our club.
I understand this has been a source of frustration and anxiety for many of you. As President, I want to be as clear and direct as possible.
2025 has been a very tough year. Tough on everyone connected to Essendon - members, supporters, from the injured players to our older players, the young blokes coming through, our coaches, our administration, everyone.
Tough on everyone to go to the footy knowing we were missing so many of our best players through injury, which made it hard to win.
To all our fans and members, thank you for your support; we couldn’t have gotten through this without you. There are no tougher or more committed supporters in the league than us. We are very grateful.
Let me be clear. Zach Merrett is contracted to our football club and our position is clear, he is not for trade.
Zach has been an outstanding player for Essendon over a long period and will go down in history as one of our best ever players. We are committed to him, and we expect his commitment to our club to continue.
This club, with its proud 153-year history, is bigger than any single player, coach, or administrator. While champions have come and gone, the club has always endured and that will continue for the next 153 years. No one is bigger than the club.
Jordan Ridley is contracted and is not for trade. We acknowledge his frustration in recent years with his body – we share these frustrations. We’ve now made fundamental changes to our high performance and medical team as we strive to provide our players with a world-class High-Performance Program and Team, led by Mathew Inness – I will touch on this further below.
Whilst understanding the AFL’s Free Agency system, we are still very disappointed to lose Sam Draper. We are incredibly proud of the work the club put in to help him become the player he is today, taking him on as a rookie with minimal football experience, training and supporting him through a knee reconstruction before he had even played a game. We wish Sam all the best.
Our club is being led by two outstanding individuals in Brad Scott and Craig Vozzo. They are determined men, who will lead this club to the success we all desire. We are lucky to have them both, and we will give them all the support and help they need to make us successful again. I ask you to do the same.
To address the immense challenges we faced with player availability, we are very excited with the recent appointments we have made in our high-performance department with Mathew Inness and David Regan. They are both outstanding professionals who are very highly regarded in their areas of expertise. We are confident that they will over time, transform this critical area of our club, so as to provide our players with the very best programs and environment for success.
We are delighted with the ongoing hard work of our List and Recruiting Team led by Matt Rosa. Their strategy, insight, and decisiveness in the 2024 Player Movement Period, has set us up for an exciting Exchange and Draft period, where we can bring in a substantial amount of young talent. We currently have at least four picks under 25, to take maximum advantage of the draftable talent available this year. We wish the Team well as they approach their Finals period of October and November.
We will continue to make changes to our list, be aggressive and uncompromising, to bring in the best available talent to our club.
We are objecting in the strongest possible way to any potential removal of the Father Son rule. We are doing this at an administration and AFL Commission level. In our view, removing this rule goes against the spirit of this game. Great sports like the AFL, don’t take away elements that are truly unique, like this longstanding rule. We understand the need for a review of the DVI system that sits behind the AFL Draft and each of the Northern and NGA Academies, and Father Son Rule, so as to better achieve fair value payment under each mechanism.
To all those members that have shown enormous grace and courage under pressure to contact either myself, Craig Vozzo or Brad Scott with positive messages of support, THANK YOU! This is a tough time for everyone, but a poor us attitude, it’s not fair attitude, will just hold us back.
We have together, all of us, done so much hard work to invest and improve all areas of the club over the past three years. We now have a foundation for growth, a platform to build for sustained long term success.
Our AFLW team is flying. I urge everyone to get behind them, they are an outstanding group of players, closely bonded by a terrific coaching and admin staff led by Aysha Ward and Natalie Wood. I encourage everyone to get out to Windy Hill and watch them play, it is a great day out and you will really enjoy getting back to Windy Hill where we all have such great memories.
Thank you for reading all of this, but it is important that I try and keep you up to date with what is going on, without at the same time bombarding you with constant messages.
After a tough year, I look forward to the draft, to see who the next stars of the Essendon Football Club will be, as well as an exciting AFLW season ending in finals wins.
Our commitment remains. To build a club that you can all be proud of, one that is built on a foundation of stability and clear direction. I can assure you that the board, our executive team, and our coaching staff, led by Brad Scott, are completely aligned on this vision. Every decision we make is deliberate and in the best interests of the club's long-term future.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Your belief in our club is what drives us, and we are working tirelessly to build a team that will deliver the success you deserve.
Go Bombers
Dave
