Essendon and Hawthorn have both spoken after Bombers skipper Zach Merrett's publicised desire to get to the Hawks fell through on the last day of the AFL Trade Period.

The Hawks' reported offer of Henry Hustwaite and three first-round picks was rejected by Essendon, with Channel 9's Tom Morris reporting that the club was after four first-rounders across the next three AFL Drafts, as well as a 2026 second-round pick.

Essendon has remained resolute in its stance that Merrett is a contracted player since the 30-year-old met with Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell ahead of trade period, and Essendon GM List and Recruiting Matt Rosa repeated that line following trade deadline.

“I did state last week that we didn't really want to hear offers,” Rosa said.

“An offer lobbed (on Tuesday) in our inbox so with 36 hours to go in the trade period it  was quite late but out of respect for Zach we did have conversations with (his manager) Tom Pertroro and Hawthorn but we've been clear all along that Zach's a required player.

“He's an important part of what we're doing. We believe in what we're doing, we believe we've got really good kids coming through, we believe in the core group we've got.

“We need to get more of that core group out on the park so we've been strong on that from the start.”

Rosa expressed confidence that Merrett would be welcomed back and backed his discipline to get back to work in pre-season without lingering issues, but conceded it wasn't optimal that the leader of the footy club wanted out.

“For us, we've kept our players in the loop the whole time (and) our staff. Zach is really well liked, the players want him back, they want him playing with them.

“Zach understands that, he's a professional and we're looking forward to getting him back over summer.

“It's not ideal (that Zach requested a trade).

“Day 1 might be a little bit awkward, that's natural but we'll move on really quickly because we want him playing with us, we want him beside us.

“We've said from the start of last week and even further back with other club representatives that it's not ideal, it's been uncomfortable, we didn't want to be in this situation but you need to try and look for the positives in it and look for opportunities to galvanise and unite.”

Hawthorn swapped picks 9, 31, 42 and 43 to Carlton in exchange for picks 10 and 22 to try to incentivise Essendon with an additional first rounder, but will instead take that hand to the draft.

“We put our best foot forward with what we thought was a very strong and reasonable deal and unfortunately it didn't get done,” Hawks List Manager Mark McKenzie said.

“(We're) definitely disappointed.

“We think our offer at the end was a very strong and very reasonable offer.

“We wanted to make some moves to improve the offers we had and we spoke to Essendon about that over the last couple of days but in the end you've got to respect their position that he's a contracted player and it didn't get done.”