{"id":323120,"date":"2025-11-26T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=323120"},"modified":"2025-11-26T10:00:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:00:43","slug":"zach-merrett-steps-down-as-essendon-captain-ahead-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=323120","title":{"rendered":"Zach Merrett Steps Down as Essendon Captain Ahead of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The 30-year-old midfielder, who led Essendon for three years since 2023, chose to step aside to let a younger group find their voice amid new draftees and fresh energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Club president Andrew Welsh called the move selfless, praising Merrett&#8217;s passion and elite standards after 251 games, six Crichton Medals, and three All-Australian nods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He stays fully committed on the field, targeting finals success, with a new captain to be named next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Club president Andrew Welsh called the move selfless, praising Merrett&#8217;s passion and elite standards after 251 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":323121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10578,35],"tags":[12490,18455],"class_list":["post-323120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afl","category-breaking-news","tag-essendon-football-club","tag-zach-merrett"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323122,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120\/revisions\/323122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/323121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}