Essendon coach Brad Scott declared he has no issues over player partner absence at matches after the social media furore over Zach Merrett’s wife leaving last week’s loss early.
Scott said he had no expectation on partners attending matches and joked he would dip into his own pockets if Merrett’s wife Alexandra wanted to attend swanky fine-dining Melbourne restaurant Gimlet. She had posted footage to TikTok having a drink at the venue “when your husbands team is losing by 50 points at half time”.
“We’re very fortunate to do what we do as players, coaches,” Scott said on Thursday. “In a lot of ways it’s harder on the players than the partners.
“We can absorb just about anything. When your partners have to absorb it, it can be extremely hard. I’ll pick up Alexandra another gift voucher to Gimlet next week if she wants it.”
Winless after four games, Scott has far more pressing matters than player partners leaving matches early, and vandals damaging the club’s training field by using petrol to write derogatory messages on the turf.
But there is hope at the Hangar the Bombers have turned a corner after an improved showing in the second half against the high-flying Western Bulldogs.
Important defender Jordan Ridley will play his first game of the season this week against Melbourne while prized draft pick Sullivan Robey is pressing hard for a debut.
Injury-prone defender Zach Reid has been cleared of hamstring damage. Scott is now in the unfamiliar position of having choices at selection. Robey, if selected, will be the fifth and final graduate from the club’s intake at last year’s draft to don the sash at senior level.
“We’ve had a really good situation in terms of availability, but also some guys in the VFL playing good footy,” Scott said.
“We’ll make some changes and some guys, when we see them out, might feel hard done by, but we haven’t been able to have that selection pressure for a long time.”
The Bombers were expected to be hammered by the Dogs but limited the damage to a respectable 34 points after trailing by nine goals at half-time.
“The effort is hard to measure when the scoreboard’s going against you,” Scott said.
“A lot of people say you just want to see competitive effort but what they really mean is they want to see a tight margin. We look at it a little deeper than that.
“For the 2½ quarters in the second half, back half of the second quarter onwards, we started to look like we’ve trained.
“That should give the guys a bit of belief in what we’re doing.”
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