AFTER seemingly endless meetings andcountless phone calls, Hawthorn ended trade week exactly as it started onFriday with the Hawks more than happy to maintain the status quo.

General manager of player personnel andstrategy, Chris Pelchen, was a popular man however, with 15 to 20 of hisplayers raised as possible trade targets by other clubs, but the Hawks wereintent on keeping their playing list intact.

“Basically over the course of the week wespoke to a lot of clubs about various opportunities, but none that we saw wasactually going to benefit the Hawthorn Football Club,” Pelchen said at theconclusion of the exchange period at Telstra Dome.

“It was just important that we didn’t tradefor the sake of trading. Ultimately if we don’t think a deal is going to betterour club’s list then we won’t do it; that’s why we made the decision that wedid.

“None of our players we had to move on thisyear, unlike the last couple of years when we were very active in the tradeweek. I think there’s a genuine belief from the coaching group that our playersare coming together and we’re headed in the right direction.”

Brisbane showed early interest in forward Mark Williams but cooled as theweek progressed, while Pelchen said none of the potential suitors who camecalling for Tim Boyle had offered enough to pry the 194cm forward loose.

“At the end of the day we never had a ‘forsale’ sign on Tim, but we were happy to at least listen to offers,” he explained.

“I think we’re obliged to do that with allour players, but nothing was forthcoming for Tim that interested us in tradinghim.

“We’re obligated to at least try andimprove our player list; all our players have that explained to them beforethey leave the club at the end of the season. With Tim, we explained thatprocess to him and said that we weren’t keen to push him out of the club and assuch he’s still with us so we’re very happy with that.”

Pelchen revealed the Hawks had shown someinterest in young Tiger Danny Meyer, but were not prepared to give up any ofthe players Richmondhad wanted to involve in the deal.

With a stated desire to stiffen its backline, Pelchen said the club had made a serious attempt to once again entice Carlton into trading BretThornton, but found the asking price too high.

“[Thornton]wasn’t a red herring, we are genuine still in our interest, but at the sametime we were never going to trade away our first pick,” he said.

“We’re still determined to rebuild the clubthrough the draft, we made efforts to try to improve our draft position, theyweren’t forthcoming, [but] we’re quite happy.

“We certainly enquired about Bret onMonday, spoke to Carltonon Wednesday, and there’s been no contact since.

“Any of the trading we do, we’ve got toactually make sure it’s very much real value and it is market value and wewon’t trade unless it is. While we certainly admire Bret as a player and would’veloved to have him at the club, at the same time we’re not going to sell outeither our players or our trade picks.”