King Buddy?

In the wake of his nine-goal haul last weekend, The Age’s Rohan Connolly saw fit to draw favourable comparisons between Lance Franklin and Wayne Carey. The Age must have been short of words for the day, because the comparison served up was so much confected nonsense.

While Franklin’s statistical output compares with Carey's, his on-ground presence is a shadow of Carey's. Can anyone seriously imagine Franklin today being seriously touted as the Hawks’ captain? Does anyone seriously think that Franklin could impose himself on a game and turn its course purely through his own efforts?

To put Franklin's effort into context, we should consider the Matthew Lloyd of 1999 and 2000 versus the Lloyd of 2008. In ’99 and ’00, Lloyd was near unstoppable, as Franklin (still only occasionally) is today. Both served by dominant midfields, getting the better of defenders was/is not insurmountable. The Lloyd of ’08 gets fewer opportunities, less favourably, because the midfield is being trounced. In these circumstances, it is becoming obvious that Lloyd is a more one-dimensional player than many would have thought.

The lone adjective not applicable to Carey was one-dimensional. When Franklin has, almost single-handedly, carried a team to glory in September, not once, but twice, it may be appropriate to start drawing comparisons with Carey.