IT DOESN'T matter what the sport is or where in the world it's being played, we often rush to label the up-and-coming players as the next big things. Our game is no exception, but Lance 'Buddy' Franklin thoroughly deserves the tag.

There is no doubt in my mind that Buddy is a genuine footy superstar, and I must admit watching him at times does make me a little envious at some of the things he can do.

He's quick, he's big, he can take a good grab, he can turn a game … he's got a bit of everything.

And he is so hard to match up on. It must be a nightmare for coaches. If you put a quick player on him, he's got the player for size, and if you put a player who is good body-wise on him, he's too quick for them. Aerobically, he's pretty good as well. I do look at him at times and think, 'I wish I could do that'.

Even in the early days you could see he had the talent. But he would do it in bursts. He would have brilliant patches and then fade out of the game; now he's doing it consistently. Of course, the service and supply he gets from his midfield is pretty good, and he's their focal point.

We've got Chris Judd, Jonathan Brown, Gary Ablett jnr and a few other guys coming through who are at the top of our game at the moment, but I think Buddy is right there beside them, and he's only going to get better.

And Buddy has got that "wow" factor. Every time the ball goes near him, the crowd goes up because they expect something to happen. That's why people go to the footy, and very few players have had the ability to excite a crowd like that.

People have been critical of his kicking because he can have days where he'll kick 1.7, then days when he'll kick 7.1. Players go through patches with their goal kicking, and at the moment it's a bit of a trend with him. However, it's just a little mental thing for him to try to get over.

I don't think he's a bad kick at all, and if he kicks straight he's going to be an even scarier player for opposition teams. As for advice, well, it's all good when it's going well but if things do go off a bit there will be knockers and people out there who want the headlines to sell papers.

He's copped a little bit but I don't think he's copped it badly yet. Hopefully he doesn't have to, but I reckon that's a real test for a player - how you react when the heat is on you, if you have three or four bad games, when there is so much high expectation on you. It isn't always easy to do but don't let yourself get pissed off with the media about it, just worry about yourself and fix whatever the problem may be.

As for me and my wrist injury, I get the cast off in a couple of weeks and they take the wires out, so I'll know more then. However, at the moment, I'm getting flogged on the track. It's like the pre-season times two with the amount of running I'm doing, but the other side of the injury is that I can't do weights so I will lose a little bit of strength until I can start back on the weights.

Some people have asked if having an extended amount of time on the sideline might add some time to my career. I don't know, to be honest. When you get to the pointy end of your career you think about the end all the time, about how you're going, and what the future holds.

I've always said that I want to finish playing footy in reasonably good form. You see really good quality players towards the end of their careers playing pretty ordinary footy and eventually they get dropped, and I don't want to be one of those players.

At this stage I've got 18 months of my contract left, and I'll sit on that for a while. I don't want to pre-empt the club, but I think with my age, anything after that would be a year-by-year thing. Anyway, a lot can happen in that time, so there's not really any point thinking or worrying about contracts or retirement right now.