This week’s AFL Continental Tyres Trade Period and ongoing Free Agency window could shape to be a formative period in Essendon’s build going forward. 

For General Manager – List and Recruiting Matt Rosa, the Dons’ draft hand of five picks inside the top 30 (with pick No.20 added to their haul from Sam Draper’s compensation) has created another opportunity for the Club to be a key player in the acquisition of both draftees and experienced talent.

Chatting to essendonfc.com.au on the first day of Trade Period, Rosa covered a bunch of different interest points as the action got underway.

Rosa on… trade, list strategy

It is an exciting time for the football club, a real opportunity for us to improve our playing list.

We’re really excited about the draft hand we’ve got with three first and two second-rounders leading into this period, so we’ll get to work on improving our hand and seeing what options we’ve got there. 

As always, we’re on the lookout for players that are role-specific that we think can come in and help, and we’re always looking to acquire A-grade talent as well if we can.

We feel like we’ve been able to find some talent during the mid-season period but we’ve had to make some list changes, we’re going to have reasonable turnover again, so that will mean the last three years we’ve had fair turnover with our list.

We expect that to settle a bit moving forward.   

Rosa on… list balance 

We are a young, emerging list but we also have real belief in the core group of players that we’ve got – Caldwell, Durham, Martin, Ridley, Reid – ideally we just need to get those guys out on the park a lot more.

We’re excited by the balance of our list, we’re looking forward to bringing in some more young talent and to a lot more of our boys getting fit and starting the season next year.

Rosa on… the Club’s stance with Zach Merrett 

Our position has been really clear that Zach’s a contracted and required player. 

He’s a champion of our Club and we’re looking forward to getting him back at the start of pre-season – no doubt he’ll continue to be a champion of our Club. 

Rosa on… Sam Draper’s departure and compensation 

It does give us a strong draft hand. We felt we put a really strong position forward to Sam, our No.1 intent was to keep him but ultimately he decided on a fresh start.

We are excited about what we now take into this period in terms of draft capital. It allows us great flexibility, we can get to work on improving what we lead into the draft with.

Rosa on… trade conversations

We’ve got some positions in mind – ideally we can bring in players that either bring depth to the squad or feel can come in and play straight away. 

The important part of that is bringing in the right character as well, and hopefully there’s some opportunities to bring in some leadership.

We’re constantly working across the course of the year to see what might be available and what opportunities there are. Those discussions have been happening all year, we’ll continue to have those and explore all avenues to improve our list.

Rosa on… the draft crop

We’ve had a good couple of days at the draft combine, our recruiting team have done a great job getting out to player’s homes and getting to know the players the best they can, but we are really excited about the talent that is in the crop. 

We’re quite bullish once you sit down and meet some of these boys, the type of character and talent that’ll be coming through the door.