So a move Toby and I ridiculed Ben for a couple of weeks ago was actually a good call. He traded out Grimes. Well, it’s semi final week in Dream Team and Grimey is out for another 1-2. Call me pessimistic, but with three weeks to go, a history of back injuries and that sort of time frame the teams still in Dreamteam finals might not be able to afford his sort of point scoring sitting idle on the bench.

On top of that, St.Kilda are continuing their DT bastardry by listing all of their players as ‘assess’ on the injury list. If any of Goddard, Gilbert or Fisher don’t get up it’ll cause even more backline headaches right at the business end of our season. Don’t these coaches realise what’s at stake here?

blonde locks Anyway, all that preamble is why I’ve targeted an underpriced defender this week, because I’ve got a feeling there will only be sporadic joy on Thursday night when teams are announced. If you’re unlucky enough to be light on in defence after team selection, have a good look at Paul Duffield.

I was remarkably close to writing about him a few weeks ago (when I did my Hargrave article). He’s very unique being in only 12,000 teams and after two bad weeks in a row (one in which he had a heavy tag applied to him) he’s dropped immensely in price. He’s actually fifth in averages for a defender this year and when one of those blokes ahead of him is Bowden, who has only played 11 games, you might as well consider him fourth. So for the fourth highest averaging player in any position you’d usually need to fork out a bit of coin.

Well, for the very low price of $323,200 you can drive away with a defender averaging 92.33. That’s almost $20K cheaper than the next defender averaging over 90.

A player’s fixture is pretty important at all times of the year, but it’s absolutely crucial with so few games to go. You wouldn’t want to trade in Lenny Hayes the week he plays Sydney for example! A glance over Duffield’s draw (I’m not even going to recognise Freo as a team…they can henceforth be known as Sandi/Pav/Duff/Broughts’ team) is pretty good reading.

Admittedly he’s not got a great history against Melbourne or Essendon, however he’s only played Melbourne once (back in his rookie year) so there’s no real evidence to suggest he doesn’t do well against them. He’s also only played Essendon twice and his last score against them was a solid 85 last season. Bear in mind that he’s had a massive breakout year this year, so history doesn’t matter as much with breakout players. For that reason I’m expecting him to score well against those two sides.

Round 22 is a much tougher assignment against Geelong, but I’ll back him in. He scored 123 against them earlier this year (his third highest score of 2009) so he’s shown he can find it against the Cats. The one concern I do have is that it’s down at Skilled Stadium, which can suck the DT points out of visiting sides. I’ll counter this with the positive that the ball will be down in Sandi/Pav/Duff/Broughts’ defensive end a hell of a lot. There’s two blokes back there who you know they’ll be getting the ball to at every chance. HINT: the second half of their new team name.