I’m guessing by now everyone has holes everywhere, but given how common Rance is, I’m going to have a look at Jack Grimes this week. OK, now first of all, going Rance to Grimes would be a pretty ugly sideways trade, but depending on your trade situation it might make a bit of sense. Rance isn’t the only concern in the backline, so covering for 0′s might be high on the agenda this week.

Grimes is a good option for a couple of reasons. As I discussed on the selection video a couple of weeks ago, I’m not a big fan of trading guys in around the $200K price range, however value is value. Grimes is a natural ball magnet, has a game well suited to DT and plays in a position where the ball will be a lot – the Melbourne backline.

Grimes He was a huge ball winner in juniors, which is largely what you’d have to consider when looking at him given that he hasn’t played a heap of footy over the last couple of years. The good news is that he showed last week that he appears ready to translate his same game to AFL level. He’s not particularly noted for his disposal, but hey, for Dream Team I can live with that. A kick is still worth three points and any turnover means the ball is coming back to where he’s standing.

The Demons will be keen to get a lot of games into him, because leadership is something that was mentioned from the time he was drafted – certainly a player they’ll be building their future around, so job security shouldn’t be an issue if he can keep his body right. His injuries over the last couple of years have been back related, so we can only hope that he’s worked his way through them completely.

I can certainly see Rance to Grimes being a pretty popular move this week, given the timing of Rance’s injury and Grimes’ massive first game of 2009 (109 points). As I mentioned earlier, it’s a very sideways trade, which could be deemed a waste (conventional wisdom would say you either downgrade Rance to a rookie priced player or try and upgrade him to a keeper if you can spare the cash). It’s an ugly situation, but Rance was looking pretty close to maxing out in price at exactly $200,000. Grimes is pretty close, priced at $186,400, but he’s got a fair bit more scoring potential than what Rance had pre-injury anyway.

It wouldn’t be beyond comprehension for Grimes to go up about $100K and all going well if he gets to that point, he might give you enough cash for an upgrade to a keeper, or just turn out to be a handy reserve for your backline. Let’s face it, the backline isn’t exactly swimming with potential rookie trade-in targets (unless Matthew Broadbent makes his debut for Port soon – one to definitely keep an eye on!). So as reactive as trading Grimes in may look, I think he provides a bit of flexibility in what you can do with him for the rest of the year.

At the end of the day, if you’re in trouble with 0′s this week and your backline is a particularly pressing need AND you don’t have much cash, Grimes would make sense to trade in.