Entering his third season as Essendon’s Senior Coach, Brad Scott has been presented with a unique set of tools at his disposal by comparison to previous seasons.

With 20 list changes and an emphasis on acquiring talent through the draft headlining the Club’s last two years from a strategy perspective, plenty of intrigue is surrounding Scott’s squad this year.

The development of youngsters such as Elijah Tsatas, Nate Caddy and Zach Reid have been key talking points for Dons fans over the course of the last few months, anticipating what the potential line-up could resemble when Opening Round rolls in on March 8.

Sitting down for an exclusive tell-all chat with AFL.com.au’s Cal Twomey at the NEC Hangar ahead of Saturday’s first practice match against the Dogs, Scott discussed a range of topics from the Club’s focus on building a culture of leadership, his selection options and the side’s emerging talent.

Scott on… player positives to build from in 2025

In terms of individuals, they speak for themselves.

Sam Durham’s one who we always thought had great capability but has continued to improve from predominantly an outside role in previous years to an inside role last year. Jye Caldwell, those sorts of players have improved, and we’ve needed them to.

Zach Merrett’s been a really consistent, dominant, All-Australian standard performer for a long period of time but he needs support.

The emergence of some young players from ‘just getting a game’ to being really dominant players and important parts of our team – Nic Martin’s an example of that, someone who came in as a relative unknown, although he burst onto the scene before I arrived at Essendon.

Scott on… list changes, new opportunities

More than what I can say, it’s what we’ve done that tells the story.

We looked to the future at the draft last year, we lost some experienced players and some guys who were clearly in our best team last year who have retired or moved onto another club.

We’ve replaced them with essentially draftees, that makes us younger but I’m really excited about the enthusiasm and the exuberance that youth brings.

The guys in their early-to-mid-20’s, they’re the guys that are going to help grow this group.

We elected to trade that (first-round pick from last year) into the future to build that platform and now we sit here with two first-round and two second-round picks for next year.

That sets a good platform for the future, but not at the expense of the present, because when older players move out, it gives opportunity for younger players.

Even a player like Archie Perkins, who clearly has got great capability, he’s found it hard to establish a regular role in our team due to some other players playing in that position. A lot of that has freed up now, so there’s great opportunity for someone like him this year.

Scott on… building an environment of leadership

It’s always a great opportunity to get away with the Captain and Vice-Captain away from the normal environment and talk more broadly about the Club and leadership in general.

The work that Zach, Andy and our broader leadership team are doing is really clearly defining what they want the Essendon culture to be.

We’re trying to move as quickly as we can to a player-driven leadership model and a player-driven group that are keepers and protectors of the Essendon culture, but you can’t do that until you clearly define what it is.

It's fair to say, if you look back over the last 10-12 years at Essendon, there’s been a lot of reasons why we haven’t been able to imbed and build on that culture.

Through circumstances that none of the players can control, it’s been a real challenge to develop leadership at our Club. We have a great opportunity now to build a production line of leaders, not only for now but for the future.

We will (add to that expanded leadership group). We’re still absolutely getting to putting the finishing touches on what that group looks like and I think equally as important as the Captain, Vice-Captain and the broader leadership group is having a program that develops and nurtures leadership from beneath.

(Nic Martin) is selecting himself in that (leadership) space. His on-field speaks for itself, and I think before you can qualify as leading others, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got your own backyard in order and Nic certainly has done that over the last few years.

He’s a very articulate, very intelligent guy who prepares himself really well, so he’s got a really good platform to develop his leadership and we’re keen to nurture that.

Scott on… shaping the forward line, staying mobile

(We have) more forward options than we’d ideally like, as strange as that sounds.

We’ve got a lot of players capable of playing there, we’re looking for some players to emerge and really make the position their own. Peter Wright is a former Crichton Medallist and a proven key position forward, Nate Caddy’s emerging, Kyle Langford has shown what he can do over the last couple of years, Harrison Jones is a really important part of our team.

There’s been a fair bit of talk about how we’re going to replace players that aren’t there, but I still think we’ve got a surplus of players who can play there. What we need is those players to really elevate their game and grab that position and make it their own.

For us, we get to expose some of our youth in positions that weren’t available last year.

Ultimately, I don’t really think there’s such a thing as being too tall – there’s such a thing as being too immobile.

Scott on… Caddy and Kako

I don’t temper (Caddy’s willingness to get better straight away).

I love the enthusiasm, I love his drive, he marries that up with work ethic. There are plenty of players who want it, but they’re not prepared to do the requisite work to get there - Nate has clearly done the work, he’s running as well as just about anyone in our team.

He’s a unique athlete and it’s exciting with what he can do.

I never like to make any statements around selection (at this stage) because experience tells me things change, but if you sit here right now, our plan is for (Isaac Kako) to play the first practice game this Saturday and he’s earned that right.

He’s really exciting, we know what his strengths are but we can’t expect Isaac to do everything for us in the forward 50, we need others to come up as well.

It’s certainly a need for us, that player in that part of the ground, so there’s opportunity there for him, but we’ve got to make sure we do what’s best for him and his long-term development.

We’re in a spot where it’s open ended, what our team could look like. It's exciting, because there’s no doubt we’ll have players emerge this year that we couldn’t have expected to emerge a month ago.

Scott on… Shiel, Tsatas and Durham

(Shiel is) an All-Australian player. Dylan hasn’t been able to show his best over a consistent period of time in the last two years based purely on injury, so it’s a good reminder to all of us just how good a player he is, that he’s had a full pre-season.

We’re looking to build flexibility through our midfield, the emergence of some young players in the inside midfield means that we want to be able to play Dylan in different roles and being an experienced player, he’s just slotted in at half back really well.

His pre-season suggests he’s laid the platform for a really good year.

Players develop at different rates and particularly inside midfielders, if you play AFL football as an inside midfielder, regardless of the team, you’re playing against the stars of the game.

I think it is Elijah’s best position, we always knew it was going to take a bit of time for him to develop into that, but he’s been able to go head-to-head in the pre-season with our best midfielders and time will tell whether he can carry that excellent pre-season form into regular games against the stars of the competition.

He’s set a great example over the pre-season and he’s a player that if he has the year we expect him to, it’ll be on the back of the work he’s done.

(Durham) is a real challenge for us because he's one of those players who we'd like to play in three different positions at once, it’d be nice (having three of him).

He'll work in with that broader midfield group and give us that point of difference in terms of dynamic speed and strength.

We like him forward of the ball, we like him around the ball. We won't be too locked into where we play him but I think where we played him last year was a pretty good start.

Scott on… Reid’s role in defence

All signs are good (with Zach Reid). He’s had a great prep, he’ll play this Saturday against the Bulldogs.

He looks so assured out on the training track and gives us a really good look.

When Ridley and Ben McKay are off the track, Reidy, for a nine-gamer, is a bit of ‘the General’ down in defence, so we’re looking forward to seeing him play.

Scott on… Club direction, list strategy

We want flexibility to be able to strike when opportunities arise.

Matt Rosa’s done a terrific job building on the base we already had here and there’s a really clear strategy. That strategy in this space doesn’t always work out exactly as you want because it’s a competitive market, but what we have is flexibility and the means to attract some players.

We have the capital to (attract players), so whatever mode of player acquisition, whether it be trade or free agency, we’re in a good position to launch at that. We’ll just keep working on the strategy and do our best to execute it.

As a wider Club, from the President through to the football department, we’re very clear that we want to build a stable base for our future.

The lure of short-term success and short-term wins are always there and very tempting, but to look at the bigger picture and build a sustainable base for the Essendon Football Club is our goal.

Scott on… the players’ mantra of ‘being a Don’

That’s been driven solely by them (the players) and they’re also not afraid to put it on the wall and hold each other accountable to that.

It’s something player-driven and it’s really quite simple.

The culture that we have and that we’re building, the actions that we value, are those representative of what we want an Essendon player to look like?

The small things matter.

You’ve got to, day-by-day, do small things a little bit better than everyone else and stack them on top of each other and you end up getting a long-term result.