Essendon board hopeful Melissa Verner Green rejects calls for more ‘football voices’ at Bombers

A David Barham ally says Essendon doesn’t need more ‘football voices’ running the club and the board “isn’t talking about football and who we are going to select”.

Essendon board hopeful Melissa Verner Green says the Bombers don’t need more football voices on the board as she hopes for status quo in returning president Dave Barham.

Bombers members have begun voting for two vacant board spots, with incumbents in president Barham and Vernon Green up against premiership players Dean Solomon and Paul Weston, as well as member Luke Maxfield.

Since Barham led a board coup that ultimately resulted in the Dons bringing in Brad Scott to replace Ben Rutten as coach, football-focused directors Simon Madden, Sean Wellman, Dean Rioli and Kevin Sheedy have all dropped off the board, at different times.

Solomon and Weston both have name recognition in the election, but Verner Green said more past players aren’t needed to join vice-president Andrew Welsh on the board.

“I’m sure some people would like to see more football people. We have been accused of over-indexing in football people,” she told this masthead.

Essendon board hopeful Melissa Verner Green.

“We have had Wellman, Madden, Sheedy, Rioli, we have been quite football heavy. We do have a noms committee that have a matrix of skills and we need to make sure we have a board that is well composed.

“We are a board of governance … we are not in board meetings talking about football and who we are going to select this week. We are certainly not in the rooms coaching, that is not the role of a director.”

Should Verner Green be successful in the election, which began on Tuesday and closes on December 17, just one spot will be left to fill.

She didn’t want to lose Barham, given she supported his push for an external review in 2022.

“I would hate if my spot was at the cost of the president,” she said.

“Dave was the one who was courageous at the time and led and put his hand up to be the president, it is a very difficult job. It is a volunteer job and essentially a full-time job as the president.

“We stood for an external review, we put a few noses out of joint. So this is a good way to get people off the board, to put up a past player, a very popular one (Solomon), because people will vote for the past player.”

Verner Green is the national agency lead at Meta and has been on the club board since 2017.

She said she wanted to continue on to see through the path that the club started on in 2022.

Despite some push for change from Dons members as they try to shake off a 20-year drought between finals wins, Verner Green said the club has made “incremental improvement” in the last two years.

“It’s hard with the emotions of football but every time we say 20 year, 20 years, we have to acknowledge a lot has happened in 20 years and for me we have to focus on the last two years and looking forward and what we are doing now to return our club to the powerhouse, premiership winning club we all want back,” Verner Green said.