SECRECY surrounding negotiations for unrestricted free agents make it difficult for clubs to retain players and receive adequate compensation for those who leave, says Hawthorn football manager Mark Evans.

Under an agreement struck between the AFL and the AFL Players' Association, details of offers made to unrestricted free agents are not shared with players' original clubs. This was the case for the Hawks, who last week lost Clinton Young to Collingwood.

But Evans believes that if the original club was privy to contract offers made by rivals, they would be better placed to assess the player's worth and position themselves more favourably for compensation.

Hawthorn plans to seek an explanation on why they received just draft pick 66 for Young and nothing for Tom Murphy (Gold Coast).

"For argument's sake, say we were only $5000 underneath the threshold and we understood that was the difference between a second-round compensation pick and a third-round compensation pick. As a club, you’d offer the $5000," Evans told Melbourne radio station SEN on Monday morning.

"[Then] you'd either retain the player or you'd get a better pick out of it. [But] if you don’t know, then you're really flying blind on that.

"The thing that accentuates it is that the compensation pick is handed out following your ordinary pick in whatever round it is. So if there are two identical free agents who pick up two identical contracts, the compensation could be as far as 17 picks apart."

Evans also raised another hypothetical: "If you've got a player who has just played in a premiership team and you end up being 30 or 40 picks behind some of the other compensations for players you think might be regarded as about the same, then maybe that system has got a couple of chinks in it."

The AFL's compensation formula is based on the player's age and his new contract offer, but Evans said clubs needed more information to understand how compensation was awarded.

"On the surface of it, pick 66 as a combination for Clinton Young and Tom Murphy doesn’t seem just, and certainly doesn’t look just when you look at some of the other compensations that were handed out," he said.

"We need a system that's got some equity in it, and we need to be able to understand why some things come out the way they do."

The Hawks are also miffed at receiving no compensation for Tom Murphy.

"It's strange, I actually wasn't aware that there would be no compensation handed out for some players," he said. "I would've assumed there might be some later picks -maybe you didn’t want that pick anyway - but I wasn't aware that you could get zero for a player."