Baum is a dick (like Carolyn Wilson) who is always pumping up West Coast and never misses a chance to pot Carlton. He wouldn't know if you were up him unless you tapped him on the shoulder and told him :

Of course it was but he still wanted to go. don't kid yourselves.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

but there's a big difference between, "I want to play for Hawthorn" and "I hate Carlton, and everyone involved at Carlton can GF"

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Love Cricket? Love me

We will probably never know exactly what happened. But I reckon something along these lines is most likely:

Bret talks to his manager and says "I have some mates at Hawthorn, they've made me a nice offer and I think I'd like to play there".

His manager says "Ok. So you want me to do what ever I can to get you to Hawthorn?".

Bret: "Yes".

Beyond that, I'd say most of it was his manager's work. Working on Bret's instructions, but only as far as the overall objective, not how to do it. After all, that's what his manager gets paid for.

Purely speculation, but I reckon McConville got played by Pelchen. I think McConville handled the situation poorly, because he bluffed and got caught out. Hawthorn were never going to offer fair value, and the PSD threat was only in Hawthorn's best interests, not in Bret's. McConville played hard ball with Carlton, but not with Hawthorn and got found out.

Credit to Carlton, I reckon they had all this figured out from the start. They knew Hawthorn weren't playing fair and McConville was bluffing and didn't feel the need to play along.