Many eyes were on Essendon and their handling of Hawthorn’s interest in contracted Captain Zach Merrett in the dying hours of the Continental Tyres Trade Period on Wednesday night. 

In line with the Club’s very public and adamant stance on retaining Merrett, he will remain a Don leading into 2026, a satisfying result from the perspective of CEO Craig Vozzo. 

Chatting to Cal Twomey and Riley Beveridge on AFL Trade Radio in the aftermath of the window on Thursday morning, Vozzo reflected on a busy week for the Club regarding the Merrett scenario. 

The Dons’ Chief Executive also touched on the influence of bringing aboard Brayden Fiorini and maintaining a solid draft hand – read the full chat below.

Vozzo on… the Club’s strategy regarding Zach Merrett

We talk very openly around how Zach is a champion of our Club and he’s someone that we had very high value on in terms of retaining at our Club and using every effort to do that as a contracted player.

That was very specific and made very clear from day one as being a key objective. 

Our position was (No.1) to retain Zach, no doubt at all. Out of respect for Zach, he expressed his view around a preference to get to Hawthorn which he made clear early this week (when) we had discussions.

Vozzo on… specifics in the proposed trade 

Those discussions involved mature players. 

No, (no other player than Henry Hustwaite was offered). From a timeline perspective, the first contact we had from Hawthorn was about 30 hours before the deadline, with a first and final offer which had a seven-hour deadline.

Without sounding in any way demeaning to Henry – he’s a very good footballer – but he wasn’t going to shift the dial in the context of this transaction.

I was very surprised (a bid from Hawthorn hadn’t come by 12pm on Tuesday). We all go about our business in different ways, that’s the way they decided to approach it. 

I guess I was disappointed in the way that (Tuesday deadline from the Hawks) was presented, to make it clear. It was an unusual way to go about things, particularly in the context of someone of Zach’s ilk. 

He’s an outstanding player, a great person, they knew he was contracted and very important to us. 

Vozzo on… Merrett’s integration back to the Club 

That’ll be a priority (helping Zach integrate back to the Club).

Taking the emotion out of everything is really important, the primary reason we wanted to retain Zach is because of his quality as a player and person. 

We’ll take steps to do that, taking some steam out of it over the coming weeks is an important thing as well.

I don’t see that as being a problem – every one of our players and staff have very high respect for Zach and know the professional he is. We’ll use every effort to make the transition back comfortable. 

Vozzo on… Brayden Fiorini, Club objectives entering Trade Period 

We’re rapt we got Brayden Fiorini through the door.

When you break it all down, our objective going into the trade period was to bring in mature talent to support our younger guys, preserve and enhance our draft hand wherever we could, but really importantly retain our best players, and Zach is our best player.

It’s pretty obvious and we’ve made that clear publicly. That was an important strategic objective and important that we carried through.

As I said earlier, out of respect for Zach and his comments, we did explore various alternatives with Hawthorn in the last 30 hours of the Trade Period. 

Vozzo on… the 2026 captaincy

We’ll go through our normal process for captaincy in the new year once the dust settles and Zach’s reintegrated into the group.

It’s a very high honour to captain a football club and there’s processes which will be followed – we’ll see what they deliver.

Vozzo on… moving up the draft order 

We’re definitely looking at ways to compress, ways to move up, the (recruiting) boys are all over both methods and they’ve started the phone calls.

Hopefully we get some productive times with those.