This year’s exchange period will start next Tuesday and conclude the following Monday. Harrington said the club would be deliberate in its approach to the trade period.
“We need to be very, very particular about who we might bring into the group - their role, experience and certainly their character,” he told melbournefc.com.au.
“We have to bring in people who we think are coachable, dependable and talented. They also need to fill a need.
“With a young group, we need to allow it to develop as best we can and we think with the nucleus we’ve got, the list can grow.
Harrington said the club would remain open-minded about next week’s exchange period.
“If for all of a sudden, for whatever reason, an interstate player has to return to Melbourne for personal or family reasons, then things can come out of the blue and you’ve got to be prepared for that,” he said.
“For example, who would’ve picked the coaching scenario at Geelong this week?
So you’ve got to be prepared.
“Having said that we’ve got to be pretty strict about the players who are coming in.”
Harrington said Melbourne also needs to find out about its own list next year.
“We also need to find out about our own list in the next 12 months - we found this year we had a breadth of midfielders, which was really pleasing and a defence that settled pretty nicely,” he said.
“And with the forwards, when we got them together, it was a pretty good forward system. We get back Ricky Petterd next year, Jack Watts is coming on and Liam Jurrah will play after missing the first half of the year and Matthew Bate is strong.
“We’ve got the personnel and we’ve got to make sure they can gel.”
From an industry point-of-view, Harrington said it was “hard to get a read on what will happen” in next week’s trade period.
“We’ll just have to wait and see what levers the Gold Coast pulls,” he said.
