With Wednesday’s 7.30pm deadline looming, the Bombers remain adamant Merrett’s wish of a move to Hawthorn will not happen.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the Blues are yet to be enticed by Geelong or Sydney, who have conducted medicals with Curnow.<\/p>\n
Essendon and Carlton have not budged for the past week over the two stars.<\/p>\n
That means the offers will most likely need to be sweetened with high draft picks, on-traded from other clubs.<\/p>\n
Christian Petracca’s wish to join Gold Coast looks more likely, given the Suns have picks seven and eight as they try to strike a deal with Melbourne for the Norm Smith Medallist.<\/p>\n
The Bombers were blindsided a month ago with the revelation Merrett had met with Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Merrett’s acceptance speech for a sixth club best-and-fairest award earlier this month sounded a lot like a farewell.<\/p>\n
But he is yet to officially ask for a trade to the Hawks and a deal would reportedly need the approval of the Essendon board.<\/p>\n
Geelong are Curnow’s preferred destination and they tabled their round-one draft picks for this year and the next two as they try to recruit the key forward.<\/p>\n
The Blues have countered by noting that, given the Cats are coming off a grand final appearance and are likely to stay in premiership contention, those picks will be well outside the top 10.<\/p>\n
Curnow has four years left on his current contract and the Blues also have been adamant their preference is for him to stay.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear whether any Sydney players want to be part of a deal that would send them to the Blues, who have overhauled their football department after dropping out of the top eight this season.<\/p>\n
Petracca’s teammate Clayton Oliver, another key member of the midfield when Melbourne won their drought-breaking 2021 premiership, has met with GWS after being told by the Demons to look for a trade.<\/p>\n
Rowan Marshall wants to join Geelong, but St Kilda have made it clear they intend to keep him.<\/p>\n
Adelaide are also at impasse with Brisbane over two-time Lions premiership utility Callum Ah Chee.<\/p>\n
GWS defender Leek Aleer has been a hard luck story of the trade period. He was said to be shattered when the Saints, one of the most active clubs in trade deals, decided against recruiting him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Wednesday’s 7.30pm deadline looming, the Bombers remain adamant Merrett’s wish of a move to Hawthorn will not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-207414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}