CARLTON has officially declared it's in the race to lure star midfielder Jaeger O'Meara away from Gold Coast.

O'Meara is due to come out of contract at the end of this season but is yet to make a decision on his future.

If the 2013 NAB AFL Rising Star decides to leave Gold Coast, it's understood he will only be interested in joining a Victorian club, with Hawthorn widely linked to him.

"We've spoken to his management but there's a lot of management that we're speaking to at the moment, just to test the water," Carlton CEO Steven Trigg told 3AW on Saturday.

"I think a lot of the competition would be looking at Jaeger and seeing whether he can get up and play for the rest of the year and just how that knee is going, and same [for] the Suns."

Trigg said the Blues' priority was to get young talent in to bolster their list depth either via the draft or trades, but stressed it was "unlikely" they would trade their first-round pick this season.

"Whatever we do it will be young players, so that we can build and develop them and we won't overspend in areas to trick ourselves that this highly paid or potentially over-priced player is going to get us where we need to go to," he said.

O'Meara has not played a senior game since round 22, 2014, having been plagued by a patella tendon injury he suffered in a practice match early last year.

The midfielder played his first game in 18 months in the NEAFL earlier this month but has been sidelined for the past two rounds with knee soreness.

Trigg also confirmed the Blues' interest in being part of a Good Friday match if the AFL breaks with tradition and fixtures a game on the Christian holiday next season.

Asked whether North Melbourne remained Carlton's preferred Good Friday opponent, Trigg said it would be up to the AFL to decide which teams played if the fixture gets the go-ahead.

But the Blues CEO was confident a Carlton-North match-up would produce "a great show".