Merrett Gone, and Somehow I’m Writing About Hawthorn Nicely

I’ve watched Essendon cop some rough trade weeks over the years, mates, I’ve genuinely lost count. But there’s something about watching Zach Merrett front the cameras in a Hawthorn polo, talking about a “unique feeling,” that hits different. It’s like watching your ex get engaged two months after the breakup and somehow still inviting you to the wedding.

The Unique Feeling Is Called Grief, Zach

Look, I get what he meant. New club, new teammates, a fresh dressing room smell that isn’t tainted by seasons of our particular brand of chaos. But when a 350-game quality midfielder says “unique feeling” about leaving the only club he’s known, Bomber fans hear something closer to relief. And fair enough too — the bloke’s earnt the right to chase a flag somewhere that isn’t perpetually rebuilding its spine.

Still stings though. Merrett was one of the genuine building blocks, a bloke who turned up every week whether we were finals-bound or finals-adjacent-in-our-dreams. Losing him isn’t like losing a bit-part player. It’s like losing the load-bearing wall and being told the house will be fine.

Reconnecting With Old Mates — Cute, But Also a Bit Rude

Part of his comments touched on being excited to reconnect with a couple of former Bombers already at the Hawks. Which, sure, lovely sentiment, very wholesome, very “look at us all getting along.” But from this side of the fence it reads a little like your old mates starting a group chat without you and then telling you about it afterwards. “Yeah Zach’s keen to catch up with the boys.” Mate, we were the boys. We had a whole thing going.

I don’t begrudge him the friendships. Footy’s a small industry and blokes move around, that’s modern footy for you. But Hawthorn building a little retirement village of ex-Essendon talent is starting to feel less like coincidence and more like a trend line, and as someone who’s spent years tracking trend lines at this footy club — rarely the good kind — I notice these things.

What Essendon Actually Got (Besides a Headache)

The football department will tell you the return makes sense long-term, draft capital, roster balance, list management, all the buzzwords we trot out when we’ve lost someone we didn’t want to lose. And look, maybe it does stack up on a whiteboard somewhere. I’ve sat through enough list management explainers at this club to nod along convincingly even when my soul is quietly leaving my body.

The truth is these decisions rarely feel good in the moment they’re announced. They feel good, if at all, two years later when some kid picked up in the deal is best-and-fairest and nobody remembers the week it happened. Essendon fans have had to learn patience the hard way — repeatedly, publicly, and usually with an MRO charge attached for good measure somewhere in the same news cycle.

Hawthorn’s Timing Is, Annoyingly, Pretty Good

Credit where it’s due — and it pains me to hand out credit to a club that’s beaten us in finals more times than I care to count — Hawthorn have played this period of the competition cleverly. They’ve built young, they’ve been patient, and now they’re layering in proven quality at exactly the point their kids are ready to use it. Merrett slots into that midfield rotation and suddenly their contested ball numbers, which were already heading in a scary direction for the rest of the comp, get scarier again.

It’s the kind of recruiting symmetry that makes rival fans mutter into their beers. Essendon fans, for what it’s worth, have plenty of practice muttering into beers. We could run masterclasses.

The Bit Where I Try To Be Mature About It

I’ll be honest, part of me wants to be bitter about this for the full pre-season, maybe into Round 1, maybe forever, that’s generally been my preferred emotional setting as an Essendon supporter since roughly 2013. But another part of me — the part that’s sat through enough tribunal hearings, suspensions, coaching changes and list implosions to develop an unusual expertise in footy administration I never asked for — recognises that players move on, clubs move on, and the game keeps rolling whether we’re sentimental about it or not.

Merrett gave us everything he had while he wore the sash. He turned up to training, turned up on match day, and never once, to my knowledge, needed to front the MRO for anything more serious than a bump that got over-officiated by an umpire having a shocker. That’s more than I can say for some of the characters who’ve worn our colours over the years, and I say that as a bloke who’s basically got tenure explaining 50/50 bump calls to confused interstate relatives at Christmas lunch.

• Essendon fans: processing this like any other breakup, with minimal dignity.
• Hawthorn fans: suddenly very interested in “culture fits” and “leadership depth.”
• Merrett: off to chase whatever he’s chasing, fair play to him.
• Me: still checking the Hawthorn team sheet every week out of pure muscle memory, probably for the rest of my natural life.

So What Now For The Bombers?

What now is what it’s always been at this club lately — rebuild, reload, hope the kids we’re backing in turn into the kind of player Merrett became. It took him years to go from promising junior to genuine All-Australian-calibre midfielder, and Essendon fans need to extend that same patience to whoever inherits his minutes, rather than expecting instant replacement. We’ve never been great at patience as a fanbase, admittedly, we tend to want premierships by March and sack coaches by May, but this is the one area where we genuinely have no choice.

Merrett leaves with our thanks, our grudging respect, and a decent chunk of our midfield engine room. Hawthorn gets a gun player and, apparently, a reunion tour with the old gang. Essendon gets to do what Essendon always does after a big departure — have a bit of a cry, crack a joke about it, and get back to building the next version of this footy club. It’s not glamorous. It’s just us.

Genuinely, good luck to him up their at Hawthorn, even if it kills me a little to type that.