Andrew Welsh sacks Brad Scott after Essendon’s one-win start
andrew welsh said Essendon had sacked Brad Scott on Tuesday morning after the club won only once in its first 11 games. The decision leaves the club moving toward a new voice for the 2027 AFL season after a run that included one win in the past 24 games.
Welsh said the club had met as a board to assess the senior coach position and added that Essendon was “not comfortable with our current position.” Tim Roberts was due to join Welsh at a media conference at 12.45pm, where the club was expected to outline the next steps.
Essendon’s 2025 slide
Scott’s exit follows a season that never recovered after Essendon reached 6-4 through 10 matches in 2025 and then failed to win again that year. Essendon’s only win in the past 12 months came against Melbourne in Gather Round, and the club equalled its all-time record losing streak of 17 matches.
Welsh said the decision was driven by the broader run of results rather than one result alone. “While long-term decisions have been clear and provide great hope for our future, we still need to show progress week to week, and we haven't seen that this year. These are genuinely difficult decisions, and we do not take them lightly but the cumulative nature of our losses and the key performance indicators set by the Club at the start of the season are not trending in the right direction.”
Brad Scott and Essendon
Scott arrived at the end of the 2022 season and inherited a club that had already changed coaches several times since Kevin Sheedy’s departure in 2007. His first year brought eight wins in the first 13 games, then only three wins from the remaining 10 games and a missed finals finish. Essendon improved to eight wins in its first 11 games in 2024 before fading after the halfway point and missing September again.
Scott signed a one-year contract extension in March 2025 that had kept him tied to the club until the end of 2027. He coached 80 games at Essendon and finished with 29 wins, 50 losses and one draw. Before Essendon, Scott had led North Melbourne for almost 10 seasons and took the club twice to preliminary finals.
Dean Solomon at Essendon
Dean Solomon was expected to be appointed interim coach, but the club had not yet made that appointment public before the scheduled media conference. If that move is finalised, Essendon will spend the immediate period explaining how it wants the football program to respond to a season that has moved from early optimism to a coaching change before the 2027 AFL season.
