For those of you lucky enough not to have started with Lance Franklin this year…well more specifically for those of you who haven’t traded him in yet, now is a great time to look at the superstar forward.

Buddy has had a pretty average start to the season. His average of 80.2 is about 20 points per week lower than what I was hoping for from him when I put him in my starting line-up. As always, someone’s trash can become someone elses treasure. That average has seen him drop $112,300 (he had gone down a little more, but marginally went up in price after a 94 last week).

LANCE His first half looked like he was on track for an absolute monster, but he faded out, which suggests the queries over his conditioning are still relevant. At the end of the day, you can cop second half fade outs if he’s scoring 60′s in the first half. It might be a bit frustrating, but at least he’ll put up decent scores with that sort of start.

Hawthorn have a pretty sweet run coming up. OK, so it looks like Bock will be back to take him on this week and if we’re to look at their history (granted, it was just one incredible game from Bock) you’d have to say the Chicken Man has Buddy’s measure.

While this week could potentially be a danger match-up for Buddy, consider this: I’m going to assume that most teams have Higgins, and that most of them have Higgins as a forward. This is the reason why I am writing about an underpriced forward for the second week in a row – you’d have to worry about the articles during the week about Higgins. Even if he does keep playing you’d think he’d be carefully managed and this could affect his scoring. I was hoping for him to be a keeper, but he might have to be a trade out now.

Consider that Buddy is a decent chance to outscore Higgins this week.  Consider that Buddy actually costs less than Higgins (at least for now!) and consider that Buddy is staring at Sydney, Brisbane, West Coast and the Bulldogs in his draw. He scored 5 tons in 7 games against those sides last year (incl. finals). Both non-tons came against West Coast.

If you already have Buddy, but you’re looking at trading out Higgins or maybe even Krakouer then consider Ryan O’Keefe (see last weeks article and this is absolutely the last chance to jump on his bandwagon) or Daniel Giansiracusa (who may pick up a few points left behind by Higgins).