North Melbourne list manager Brady Rawlings has said the club is holding out hope that emerging prospect Zane Duursma does a trade 180 and stays at the club, but the Roos are prepared to do a deal with Melbourne for the 21-year-old.
During the first day of the trade period, Rawlings spoke to media about how a deal for the former Pick 4 in the National Draft could play out.
"We tried to talk Zane out of requesting a trade. He seems like he wants a fresh start, but I don't think there's any bad blood there, so if he comes back, we'll be more than happy," Rawlings said.
"We would love him to stay. He is an absolute talent. We think with our improvement as a club, as we go forward, he could play a major part in it. So yeah, would prefer him to stay, but he's requested a trade, so we need to look at it.
"He's out of contract, but if there's nothing on the table worth looking at, we'll try and talk him back around."
On the flip side, Rawlings said the Roos would be red hot in their pursuit of Adelaide key defender Nick Murray.
Crows list manager Jarryd Roughead has said that Adelaide would not contemplate a trade for Murray who has two years left on his contract. This was in part due to the fact the Crows had already lost key defender Jordon Butts to the Western Bulldogs this off-season.
The Roos and Crows will meet to discuss on Monday. Rawlings said he understands that they will have to pay a heavy price to secure Murray, but it won't involve their Pick 5.
"He's still in contract for another couple of years. So to try and get him out of Adelaide, it's probably going to be a little bit tough for us," he said.
"We've had a couple of chats. Obviously, they've got a bit of a position on where they sit with Butts going out as well.
"We know we're gonna have to put something pretty handy to them to turn their head. We're not gonna muck around. We're gonna put something to them today and see where we go.
"We've had a priority of bringing a key defender this year. We looked at options last year. There was probably no one on the trade market last year to bring in that we thought could help us.
"We think a combination with Nick and Charlie (Comben) could work really well. And we know if we want to bring in a key defender who is contracted, we're gonna have to fork up some value."
Another key defender North Melbourne has its eyes on is Essendon's Jordan Ridley. However, the Bomber appears eager to move to Geelong.
Rawlings said the club will maintain its interest in the 27-year-old as the Roos look to bolster their backline.
"Initially, we did (have interest in Ridley). Clearly he's met with the Cats and would probably prefer to go down that path. We'll hang around. If things aren't working out with those two clubs, we would still have some interest," he said.
"But Jordan hasn't indicated he wants to come to us so at the moment we'll stick with trying to get Nick Murray done."
