IT'S ALL about Buddy.

The TV sports departments know it, which is why there are 11 cameras and 15 reporters jammed into Hawthorn's small media room at Waverley Park - and why the carefully positioned sponsor's football is perilously close to toppling off the podium it now shares with a dozen microphones and a cluster of tape recorders.

Luke Hodge knows it, because when the skipper comes into the room and sees the crowd he smiles ruefully and mutters, "Might be a few questions on Franky."

This week, Lance Franklin's knee may be the most talked-about body part of any sportsperson on earth, with the possible exception of Serena Williams' tongue.

In Melbourne, in September, with only one local team playing in town on the weekend, the fate of Buddy's hyper-extended right leg is front-page news.

Hodge has a resigned look but the first question, to his obvious surprise, is about his own fitness for Friday night's meeting with the Sydney Swans.

"Yeah, nah, I'm fine," he says, and there's a sense that, OK, we've been polite and done the right thing and inquired about Hodge's health, now we can ask the question everyone really wanted to ask.

So, how's Buddy?

"Thought that one was coming," says Hodge.

'Franky' is walking around, the skipper tells the room, and has been on the bike. "If you ask him, he's 100 per cent."

But it's not up to Buddy, and Hodge concedes the Coleman medallist is "still unlikely" and that nobody at the club was holding their breath over his fitness.

Thursday is when it will all be decided. "If you don't train on Thursday, you won't play," he says.

Later Hodge offers this description: he's athletic, he has speed, he's in good form.

He might well have been speaking of Franklin, but it's Adam Goodes who is under discussion, which tells you that it ought not to be all about Buddy.

Goodes is a dual Brownlow winner at the absolute peak of his powers, and we should be celebrating his participation in this match as much as we bemoan Franklin's probable absence.

Still, football clubs at finals time can try to spin the bleakest of prospects into a veritable godsend.

Hodge points out that the last time the Hawks played without Franklin and fellow forward Jarryd Roughead they kicked 23 goals.

Jordan Lisle can come in. Shaun Burgoyne can go forward. So can Jordan Lewis or Sam Mitchell.

Yes, there's a certain symmetry about once managing 23 goals without No.23, but as Hodge said, you wouldn't hold your breath.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs.