LIST MANAGER Tim Harrington believes this week’s trade period might be quieter than expected.

Although the 2009 exchange period was active - as opposed to other recent years - Harrington said the industry view is that there will be fewer deals completed in 2010.

“Most of the people that I’ve been speaking to think it will be a reasonably settled trade period - and there won’t be many trades,” Harrington told melbournefc.com.au.

“Maybe it’s because the Gold Coast have taken six uncontracted players already.”

Harrington said the other reason why it could be quieter this year is because this is no ‘headline’ player, like Chris Judd or Shaun Burgoyne up for grabs - at this point.

Gary Ablett is a massive name to have already crossed clubs post-season, but the Suns acquired him from Geelong as an uncontracted player - not via the trade period.

“There are no obvious players or big name players saying they want to go home or get out of their club, which is different to previous years,” Harrington said.

“There is usually one big name player - by this stage - who has put their hand up to leave their club.

“The influence of the Gold Coast has obviously lessened that, because they’ve got the big name uncontracted players going to the one place, which has played out in recent times.”

Clubs have also been recontracting players earlier this year, which will also impact trade week, according to Harrington.

“As a general rule, clubs have been more proactive in re-signing their players at a much earlier date - in part to protect the threat of the Gold Coast,” he said.

“Clubs have had to give consideration to giving security to its players and also you want to pay your players the right amount and not have an inflationary situation, which can impact in the years to come.

“Most clubs have the same attitude to this.”

As for the Demons, Harrington said most of the red and blue players have put pen to paper.

“We’ve re-signed the majority of our players now and we’ve done it reasonably early,” he said.

“As well as re-signing, we’ve also extended out contracts as well, so players who were in contract, we’ve been able to go to a couple of them and get them to commit for a longer period of time.”

In terms of further Melbourne developments heading into trade week, Harrington said the club will continue targeting “specific needs and pushing those boundaries”.

“We really need to keep putting time and effort into our own players for the next period of our development, because we really do believe that we’ve got some talented players who can improve reasonably quickly,” he said.

“We just need to make sure that we progress their development in the right way and that they learn good habits.

“So when we become a stronger team all round, we can have a sustained period of excellence, rather than just get there quickly by bringing in players who might be more experienced, but might not last as long.”