The first signs were subtle enough to miss from the outside.
A reshuffled coaching structure. A respected assistant departing. An old premiership teammate returning home. On paper, Essendon’s decision to appoint Dean Solomon as an assistant coach in late October last year looked like little more than a football club reconnecting with one of its own.
Inside the walls of Tullamarine, however, the move carried far greater significance.
By the time Solomon officially resigned from Essendon’s board to join Brad Scott’s coaching panel, some within football had already begun viewing the appointment as a moment that quietly altered the balance of power at the Bombers.
Not because Solomon lacked credentials. Far from it.
A member of Essendon’s 2000 premiership side, Solomon had spent more than a decade coaching at Fremantle and Gold Coast before later working part-time at GWS. He was respected, experienced and deeply connected to the club.
But the context made this different.
The appointment came shortly after highly regarded assistant Daniel Giansiracusa departed Essendon for Hawthorn, stripping Scott of one of the key members of his inner sanctum. Giansiracusa had become an increasingly important voice within the Bombers’ coaching structure and his exit created both a tactical and emotional void.
Essendon moved quickly to fill it.
“When looking to fill the vacant position within our coaching team, Brad [Scott], ‘Vozz’ [Craig Vozzo], Daniel [McPherson], and I were considering who is out there and the best available talent across the industry,” president Andrew Welsh said.
“When it was first raised to me about ‘Solly’ joining the coaching group, it made me consider what the best use for him at the club was.”
The line raised eyebrows in football circles.
Not because Solomon was unqualified, but because the club president had positioned himself so prominently inside a football department appointment process involving a sitting board member and former teammate.
Welsh and Solomon’s relationship goes back decades. They played together during Essendon’s most dominant modern era and have remained close long afterwards. In isolation, that meant little. Football is built on relationships.
But coaches are acutely sensitive to shifts in authority and influence around them, particularly at clubs under pressure.
And by the back half of 2025, pressure had become Essendon’s permanent state.
Privately, some at the Bombers viewed Solomon’s appointment as a smart football decision – an experienced voice with strong standards returning to strengthen a developing list. Others saw a president placing a trusted ally directly into the football program at a time the senior coach was becoming increasingly vulnerable.
That vulnerability had not yet fully surfaced publicly. Scott still cut a composed figure externally and remained highly respected internally for the professionalism and structure he had brought to the club after replacing Ben Rutten.
But the dynamics were beginning to shift, according to key people at the club.
“It’s great that he has been able to jump out of his board role and back into our football department,” Scott said in the same release.
Solomon was no longer merely part of the governance structure overseeing the football program. He was suddenly inside it – coaching players, shaping standards and operating daily within Scott’s environment.
For a senior coach, that can either feel like reinforcement or surveillance.
By then, Essendon’s internal pressure points were already mounting. The club remained trapped between competing timelines – desperate to return to finals relevance while simultaneously attempting to regenerate its list. Externally, the Bombers continued preaching patience and development. Internally, impatience was beginning to creep in.
The trade that wasn’t
The revelation earlier in October that then captain Zach Merrett had met with Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell about a potential move to the Hawks was the moment everything cracked in public.
Trust cracked on both sides.
Early in Scott’s tenure, the relationship between coach and captain had been strong. Scott admired Merrett’s professionalism, intelligence and standards, while Merrett embraced the stability Scott initially brought to a football club still scarred by the chaotic end to Rutten’s tenure.
But over time, the relationship became complicated.
Part of that was football. Part of it was politics. And part of it was personal.
Merrett had watched close friends and trusted teammates progressively leave Essendon as Scott attempted to reshape the list and standards of the football club. Jake Stringer was moved on. Nick Hind departed. Jayden Laverde – another player Merrett was particularly close to – was also traded.
From Scott’s perspective, the decisions were necessary. Senior coaches make hard calls, not sentimental ones. He believed Essendon needed to change culturally and structurally if it was ever going to escape the cycle of mediocrity that had consumed the club for two decades.
But the list decisions carried emotional consequences.
Slowly, the coach and captain began seeing the club’s future through different lenses.
By the time Hawthorn’s interest in Merrett intensified, the distance between player and club had already widened.
Conversations with the Hawks about life after Essendon had been occurring quietly in the background before eventually escalating into a full-scale trade pursuit.
When Scott became aware of the extent of those discussions, it hit hard.
People close to the coach say he felt deeply disappointed by the situation, believing his captain and best player had not been fully honest with him about the seriousness of Hawthorn’s advances.
For Scott, it felt personal.
It wasn’t the first time that Merrett had made sounds about wanting to leave since Scott had arrived at the club. And given the latest attempted defection was to Hawthorn, a bitter rival of both Essendon’s and Scott’s, the coach had enough.
He would have been happy to take the picks, shake hands and turn the page on a new chapter.
The frustration inside the football department only intensified when Essendon’s financial position surrounding Merrett’s contract became impossible to ignore.
Merrett’s deal had been heavily front-ended, meaning the Bombers had already paid the overwhelming majority of the contract. In simple terms, Essendon had carried much of the financial burden already. If Merrett left, the club would lose not only its best player but also millions of dollars it could never recover.
That reality hardened attitudes quickly.
And while Scott and Welsh were not aligned on every issue the Merrett situation was one issue which wasn’t worth a confrontation.
Welsh had arrived determined to project strength after years of instability and compromise at board level. The new president was adamant Essendon could not afford to lose another major figure and further damage the perception of the football club externally.
Merrett would not be traded and Scott was more than comfortable publicly supporting it.
In fact, some internally believed the coach saw the stance as necessary not just for the club, but for maintaining what remained of his authority. If Essendon allowed their best player to engineer a move after privately exploring options elsewhere, what message would that send to the rest of the playing group?
As the stand-off dragged on, the situation became increasingly difficult.
Merrett felt trapped. Essendon felt betrayed. Scott felt undermined.
And the playing group watched the entire saga unfold in real time.
The public rhetoric remained disciplined. Essendon spoke about contracts, leadership and commitment. But privately, according to close observers, the failed trade left emotional scars across the football club that never truly healed.
The subsequent decision for Merrett to relinquish the captaincy was framed as part of a reset. Unofficially, many inside football saw it as the unavoidable fallout from a relationship between player and club that had fractured beyond repair.
A change in the coach’s mood
Those who know Brad Scott best began noticing a change in his demeanour.
The energy dipped slightly. The sharp humour that had always made him one of football’s more engaging personalities became less frequent. Conversations became shorter. The warmth and optimism that defined much of his early time at Essendon wasn’t so evident.
Then, over time, the shift became impossible for some around him to ignore.
People close to Scott became increasingly concerned the weight of coaching Essendon was beginning to consume him.
When he arrived at Essendon Scott had embraced the scale of the rebuild, the expectations and even the scrutiny that comes with one of the AFL’s biggest clubs.
“We’re not entitled to anything,” an enthused Scott told this masthead’s Jake Niall.
He believed Essendon could be fixed and that he could be the one to fix it.
While he remained committed to seeing through that rebuild as the losses piled up, people around him noticed he became less open around the club.
As recently as this year, Scott was advised by club officials that he would be well-served to make more of an effort with staff at the club who work in small but vital roles.
Some were concerned he was becoming disconnected. Not himself.
Those close to him describe a coach who increasingly appeared burdened by the size of the task confronting him. The constant balancing act between rebuilding the list, managing personalities, satisfying a demanding board and trying to drag Essendon back towards relevance had begun taking a visible toll.
And perhaps that should not have surprised anyone.
Because since the end of Kevin Sheedy’s reign, Essendon have developed an uncomfortable pattern.
Matthew Knights barely lasted two seasons. James Hird carried the emotional devastation of the supplements saga. Mark Thompson did his best to steady the ship. John Worsfold eventually appeared worn down by the instability surrounding the club. Ben Rutten was publicly humiliated by the handling of his departure.
Now Scott had become the latest strong football figure to walk into the Essendon believing he could stabilise the institution.
Instead, the institution slowly consumed him, too.
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Sam McClure is an award-winning AFL journalist and broadcaster.Connect via X or email.
