Gold Coast has refused Hawthorn's "low-ball" offer for Jaeger O'Meara and still hopes the wantaway star might reconsider leaving the club, Suns chairman Tony Cochrane says.
With negotiations at a stalemate and the clock ticking towards Thursday's NAB AFL Trade Period deadline, Cochrane confirmed the Suns were prepared to lose O'Meara for nothing in the pre-season draft.
He also said Hawthorn had picked an "appalling" year to try to snare O'Meara given the Suns already hold a swag of top-end draft picks.
Gold Coast has knocked back the Hawks' latest offer of picks 10 and 48 for O'Meara and the Suns are continuing to demand that an experienced senior player is thrown into break the trade deadlock.
"It's really not at anywhere exciting, I regret to say after a lot of posturing by Hawthorn over the last month about how exciting this young player is and what they were hoping to do and attract him across to their club," Cochrane told SEN.
"We've been consistent in our position since day one that we want to be properly compensated, and as of late yesterday afternoon the best they can come up with in compensation is pick 10 and pick 48.
"Putting us to one side, just from O'Meara's point of view, it's a pretty low-ball offer for an exciting young star."
If a deal can't be orchestrated, Essendon could swoop on O'Meara with the first pick in the pre-season draft.
But Cochrane still held out some hope the 22-year-old might change his mind about moving to Melbourne and stay at Gold Coast.
"We'd love him to reconsider," he said.
"He said at the time that it was a tough decision, he could see we had a bright future, he could see the hard work we've been putting into bringing real success and real belief to the Gold Coast footy club. It was a tough call on his behalf to pick Hawthorn."
The Suns offered a two-year deal to O'Meara after two years out of the game battling knee injuries.
But with the 2013 NAB AFL Rising Star winner deciding to leave, Cochrane said the club had to make a stand because it didn't want to be a training ground for young players who would eventually walk out.
"We have to try and claw out our little bit of territory here," he said.
"Its no-one's fault, but Hawthorn's picked an appalling year to try and grab somebody like an O'Meara off of us.
"The reason why I say that is because this particular year … we've got an absolutely bottler of a group of (draft) picks.
"We're blessed with an enormous (draft) pick selection and it will be further blessed today with (Dion) Prestia (leaving).
"If ever we were going to make a stand, this is the year to do it."
Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson flew to the Gold Coast recently but failed to convince Cochrane to let O'Meara go in "a very entertaining" hour-long chat.
"He outlined to me what he saw as my concerns going forward if I didn't do the deal based on his experience," Cochrane said.
"He tried to put the Hawthorn spin on it, the Hawthorn take on the whole thing, which I accept.
"I've got their opinion and unfortunately in this situation there's a buyer and a seller.
"On this occasion we, the Gold Coast footy club, are the seller and sellers only sell when you get to a price or situation when they're prepared to say, 'Yep, that will do it for us'."
