Hawthorn have laid out the welcome mat for disillusioned Port Adelaide ace Shaun Burgoyne, declaring they would effectively bypass the AFL draft to recruit top-line players for 2010.

While the disbelieving Power maintain Burgoyne could yet be persuaded to stay a la Sydney's Ryan O'Keefe last year, Hawks personnel manager Chris Pelchen revealed he had flagged an interest months ago.

Pelchen said the club's eye on Burgoyne, among others, had first been raised in a mid-year meeting with his manager Ben Williams and heated up considerably last week.

The Hawks' young list and the preponderance of former Power staff members now at the club are thought to weigh heavily in Hawthorn's favour as Burgoyne's first-choice destination.

"We expressed our interest to (Williams) last week that if Shaun makes a move we'd be very happy to get him to Hawthorn and after the announcement yesterday I spoke to Ben again this morning," Pelchen told AAP.

"We're definitely interested in Shaun and we'd love to put forward our case.

"The previous relationships that are there, whether it be myself as one of the people who drafted him, (fitness coach) Andrew Russell or (senior coach) Alastair Clarkson, we're hoping they are a positive."

An aggressive drafting campaign over the past few seasons has give Hawthorn the league's youngest list and Pelchen said they had little need or desire to add more youth this year.

This means their first three draft picks, Nos. 9, 25 and 41, are all open to trade.

"We're open to trading away our draft picks," Pelchen said.

"We've attacked the draft very aggressively over the last two-to-three years and we've got the youngest list in the competition ... Shaun's one of three-to-four players we're having a look at."

Port football operations manager Peter Rohde emerged from an end-of-year review meeting at AAMI Stadium to all-but deny Burgoyne would be leaving the club - a highly optimistic position given the words of the player and his management.

"We'll certainly be talking with him in the next few weeks, sitting down with him and trying to understand his reasons," Rohde said.

"Certainly our playing group are already on the phone and trying to make contact with him."

As for Burgoyne's trade value, Rohde indicated the club would be seeking rather more than Hawthorn seem able to give.

"Shaun's worth we haven't really considered yet but we rate him as a very important player," he said.

"I think our coaches and our match committee rated him as the most important player in our team at the start of the year, so not much has changed on that and we think he's right up there with the best players in the competition.

"We'll be looking for the best player we can possibly get or the best outcome for the club we can get."

The Power have shown all the signs of an unhappy club in 2009, both on the field and off it, and Rohde said the issue of team harmony would also factor heavily into how the club handled Burgoyne.

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