By Jon Pierik
Former Essendon and Sydney defender Ted Richards will join the Bombers’ board of directors as a replacement for his former teammate Dean Solomon.
The 42-year-old’s appointment was confirmed on Friday, when the club hailed his “strong business acumen” and ties to the club.
Ted Richards will become a director of the Essendon Football Club.Credit: Essendon FC
Richards played 33 senior games for the Dons before taking the field 228 times for the Swans, where he was a 2012 premiership player and later inducted to the club’s hall of fame.
“The appointment of Ted Richards to our board will be an outstanding addition for the club. We’re gaining someone who not only grew up loving the red and black and wore our guernsey with pride, but who went on to achieve the ultimate success in our game,” said Essendon president Andrew Welsh, who also played with Richards for the club in the early 2000s.
Richards said he wanted to help the Bombers achieve success.
“I still have a deep passion for football, so it’s great to get back involved. I’ve been really impressed in my discussions with Andrew Welsh and other board members about the path the club is on. I genuinely believe my experience can help get Essendon back to the top, and that challenge excites me enormously,” he said.
This masthead reported on Wednesday that Richards was weighing up the opportunity to replace Solomon, who stepped down last month to join the club’s coaching panel.
Solomon’s decision to quit the board in favour of the coaching department raised eyebrows across the league, but it was a move backed by captain Zach Merrett, who had unsuccessfully sought a trade to Hawthorn.
Merrett endorsed Solomon’s appointment on social media, expressing his excitement about the club’s direction. He posted the announcement to his Instagram story tagged with “#7”, suggesting the move could be a first step in healing his relationship with the club. Merrett, as Solomon did, wears No.7.
Solomon, a 2000 premiership Bomber, was a long-time assistant coach at Fremantle, Gold Coast and GWS. He was also an interim senior coach at the Suns.
Bombers president Andrew Welsh last month said Solomon’s replacement needed to have a football background.
“A process is already underway to fill Dean’s vacant board position, with that person having a football background to ensure we still maintain football expertise at board level,” Welsh said.
The Bombers say Solomon is an ideal addition to their coaching crew, where he has been put in charge of defence.
“‘Solly’ needed to take a lot into consideration, including relocating from NSW, but after careful thought, he embraced the opportunity, and we were rapt that he accepted this role as an assistant coach to get back into the trenches and help fast-track the development of the team,” Welsh said.
The Bombers endured a tumultuous second half of 2025 on and off the field.
Injuries and poor form meant they quickly fell from top-eight contention, while Merrett’s failed bid to join the Hawks, the public disappointment of this expressed by his teammates, and then-president David Barham’s decision to step down added to the drama.
AFLW not ready for Marvel Stadium grand final
AAP
The AFLW grand final will be moved to Marvel Stadium only when league boss Emma Moore is confident of the decider selling out.
With three of this weekend’s four finals to be held at Ikon Park, the showpiece match of the season is also set to be staged at the 13,000-capacity ground on November 29.
The only way it won’t be at Carlton’s home venue is if the third-ranked Brisbane Lions win their qualifying final and rampaging minor premiers North Melbourne fail to qualify for the grand final.
Since the AFLW moved to starting the season in August in 2022, and finishing in November, the last game of the year hasn’t been played in a stadium.
Fitting AFLW in around cricket, concerts and major events is a major complicating factor.
“When we’re at the stage in the competition where we’ve grown so much that we are bursting out of the venues that we’re playing at, and when we know we’re going to fill Marvel Stadium and create a fantastic grand final experience, that’s when we’ll play at those venues,” Moore said on Wednesday at the AFLW finals launch.
Players are desperate to have more than 12 rounds in a season, with the league setting out ambitious metrics for further expansion.
Clubs took the unorthodox step last weekend of appealing to fans through social media to attend their games because they needed the crowd figures to ensure longer seasons.
“This is really year zero to one of that strategy where we’re really focused on growth in terms of our fan base as well as on the field,” Moore said.
AFLW boss Emma Moore at the finals launch.Credit: AFL Photos
“We’ve grown this season in terms of what we were going after, and we’ve also seen some really great growth in terms of our AFLW membership.
“We’ve seen growth year-on-year in terms of attendance. We had a really specific approach in our strategy in terms of discovery games, marquee games and priority games for the league ... what we’ve seen is somewhere between 27 to 38 per cent growth.”
Moore confirmed the AFLW would again proceed with a night grand final following on from the first under-lights decider last year between the Kangaroos and Lions.
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