Last year,Merrett was an inside player who was accustomed to amassing possessions and learning to deal with tags. Last year,he was vice-captain all year and led the club for half-a-dozen games.
This year he is an inside-outside player and no longer in the leadership group. Essendon and Merrett are better for the shift in his style of play.
A prevailing wisdom for a year or so was that a key to beating Essendon was to tag Merrett.
Now it is not so simple. He dealt with tags better last year and got better this year. This season he is also not playing the same role.
"I got a free ride in'16 and half of'17 then everyone put the clamps on. It was something I was aware of being likely to happen if I kept up that form. It was something I was working on with Hayden Skipworth probably two years or 30 months earlier,knowing tags were coming and working on how to deal with it,but practising it and doing it in practice is different to reality,"he said.
"I didn't get frustrated if[Ed] Curnow beat me early days,you just know you have to work it out. Some guys tagged me well,other times I broke the tag. I think I looked at different ways I could influence the game and ways to influence play with a tag. Dyls[Dylan Shiel] is here and getting tagged and coping."