ONE week of finals down and hopefully your teams still have three weeks left in them. There are a few things you need to think about this week as we head to the Semi Final week. Once again we have a big name injury to deal with this week, and thankfully we have those two trades a week to use.

Luke Parker is now out for the rest of the Fantasy season with his broken ankle. It did look very bad, but thankfully he may be back during the finals. However, this will be too late for our sides. So you need to trade him, and even if you have the week off this week I would suggest that you should still do it this week. I have a couple of reasons for this which are as follows:

• You can’t predict the future. So if you hold Parker this week and use your trades to cash in two rookies and have heaps to use for upgrades next week. Now you don’t know what will happen. You might lose two more premiums next week to injury, then you would be stuck with three injured premiums in your team and you could only fix two. This could cause you to lose your Prelim final.

• Overall Ranking. We all have a look at our overall ranking and there is a lot of pride in this. So you don’t really want to have an injured premium in your team if you can avoid it. You may slide down the rankings.

In terms of a replacement for Parker the key guys that I would be looking at would be dependent on your bankroll and who you already have. Unfortunately he dropped by $30k this week with his 55 and is now priced at $478k. The key guys around his price for those of you with no cash in the bank the first guy I would consider would be Rory Sloane. He is actually cheaper than Parker, scored 136 last week and has a reasonable run home with Brisbane, West Coast (at home) and Geelong.

If you don’t own our favourite Robbie Gray you could get him which would also give you a mid/fwd link. He only costs $6k more than Parker and is averaging 97 with Hawthorn, Gold Coast and Fremantle to come. Not the best run, but he can do well against the good teams too, so don’t count him out. The other option you could look at if you have $20k then you could go to Tom Mitchell* who has been on fire lately and the Swans have a dream run with GWS, St Kilda and Gold Coast. If you can afford him then he is the option I would definitely be taking.

If you are lucky enough to have the week off in your league this week and you have no big injuries or fixes that you need to do to your team then you could consider the strategy of getting some cash. This would involve trading down a couple of your guys on the bench and bringing in a cheap guy that is playing or if you already have bench cover, the cheapest guy you can get! However, I stress that as I mentioned in my Luke Parker info above, you should only consider doing this if you have absolutely nothing else to do. What you would be doing with this strategy is allowing yourself to do a couple of big upgrades next week for the Prelim finals.

If you have the week off, don’t drop the ball, keep a close eye on your team and make sure it is all good for next week. If you are playing this week, then go all out, perhaps look for a point of difference if you are really worried in your matchup. As always keep a close eye on teams and Friday late outs. Catch me on Friday morning on www.dreamteamtalk.com for my final thoughts on the round.

*Editor's note: Now that Tom Mitchell is out, obviously we wouldn't bring him in and I would strongly consider Sloane or your other option would be Mitch Wallis who doesn't cost much more than Parker and with the form that the Doggies have been in he could be a solid cover for your side, particularly if you are light on cash as he only costs $8k more than Parker.