I would not play Dixon again unless he comes on has a water carrier he is hopeless

then again if he brought the water on he would drop the Bottle

Interesting perspective. My views below:

First Team SL Quality (11) - Sio, Minns, Thornley, Blair, Walker, Lunt, Allgood, Greenwood, Green, Mulhern, Clarkson
Not First Team SL Quality (3) - Marsh, Dixon, Cockayne (now past it)
Questionable / Maybe (3) - Tilse (good in patches), Lawler (another 10 games needed), Moran (way too early to tell)

As things stand, I think that Matty Marsh could make it in SL if he switches to centre and if he bulks up a bit. For now, he hasn't the speed of thought, the game smarts, variety of kicking and attacking skills and most importantly the personality to make impact as a SL starting halfback, despite what Campo and Webster say.

From what I have seen of Matty Marsh he looks a prospect or the best we have had in a while. The only way he will get the skills you want to see is by playing! there by hangs the British dilemma where will he get game time? by the time I was his age I had been playing twice a week through a long winter seasons since aged 10 about 500 games (crude estimate) we also played on a night with mates in the streets or at play time with any old ball we could find that's what honed our skills (not mine I was rubbish) I would make a guess that he will have played less than 200 games in his life especially if he came from a school that did not play rugby. My whole point is we have to give him & the team time or we will be forever grabbing what aged Aussies that are willing to come.

dixon is rubbish. I'm sure the coaching staff know and I doubt he'll get a contract renewal when the time comes

Not.

When does his contract expire? Think a lot of clubs would swoop on him.

I think perhaps both Dixon and also actually Omari Caro could have made superstar RL players had they come through the ranks of an established Super League side like a Leeds/Wigan rather then through the London system.

This is obviously wild speculation with no reasoning behind it rather then just what I think, but you can draw parallels between them both as being "raw" players and I think London didn't fully realise what they had with those two and failed to provide them with the kind of specialist training that would have developed them further or perhaps lacked the facilities or inclination to do so.

I don't think it's too late for Dixon but I don't think we are the right club for him at the moment. IMO he needs to spend a year or two in the national leagues, rack up the game time, be playing on the wing every single game every single week becoming more "streetwise" at a decent standard before then being brought back into the Super League. He's a talent and in offense he offers a massive threat. I think Dixon has all the stuff you cant teach, but he needs more time spent on the things that can be taught, such as defensive positioning.

Dixon has a few parts of his game to improve and if he doesn't start improving soon he won't get many more chances.
1. He needs to improve his defense, IMO he should always go low to the legs and forget about the offload. That's if he has the bottle to go low.
2. He needs to be a lot better under the high ball. At least compete for it!!!
3. When he's running the ball out at a kick return he needs to hit the defense low again. He is never going to get a leg drive on in the same way as Sio, so he needs to try to get a quick play of the ball.

Even if he did the three things above regularly other teams will still target him, he's gonna have to be brave and I'm not sure that he has the mentality.

Omari Caro, potential Superstar RL player....lol lol lol. There's hope for us all

I think he had potential. He had size and pace.

One thing that has disappointed me about the last few years (particularly Sandercocks reign) is that we haven't improved players such as Omari Caro and Dixon. They both had/have potential.

Scoring tries at Brat-fud, would love him to get back into SL, could and hopefully will happen.

I just don't understand why people who watch the sport gain glee from players struggling, actually, I do.

It's because they themselves never even got a chance to give it a go, they were the third pick on the school playground, and on the off chance they got a go, they were the kid who threw the ball on the ground as soon as anybody looked like they might tackle them.

And then they accuse the like of Caro and Dixon of having no steel.

Well said Sandro

Leaving aside all the facial, head and body stitches and displaced patella from my Rugby playing days plus the numerous finger fractures, dislocations, impact scar tissue I got during 25 plus years of playing League Cricket, often fielding at short leg or silly mid off without helmet or shin pads, I won't take your none too subtle side swipe too personally, Goose.

I have championed Dixon in the past, but he values his looks too much imo. No improvement being shown and too often a liability, so he needs to go. Sorry.

But then I understand you less.

I apologise for calling your opinions into question through lack of experience, but I do not apologise for you calling people you have not played with or a game you have not played cowards.

The game is different now, and not for me, always in a good way. I think player welfare is of a horribly low standard.

When we got into SL, I remember thinking the collision was fierce. Much more than when I had played the game to a much lesser level several years earlier. It had moved on since then.

Dixon I estimate to be about twelve and a half stone, everytime he plays and takes an exit set ball he is met by about fifty (at a conservative estimate) stone of force.

Is that cowardly?

3
Not cowardly using your above analogy. You make a fair point overall, but I still think he tends to bottle certain types of contact as a means of self preservation and his defensive positioning and reads are poor and at best arbitrary. I don't think many would disagree with that.

It's not an analogy, it's the game.

I find it stunning that you purport to have done something and then question anothers commitment.

Poor defensive reads and plays do not equate to cowardice.

Last week at Leeds, Dixon, in a very cowardly fashion ran down two line breaks.

I think is big problem is he does not concentrate enough and when i say problem it seems to be one that will not go away, he will be like it all the time one minute he is switched on the next he is not

So 12 stone being met by 50 stone is not an analogy then, but Goose logic.

Read my last post again, especially the bit about him bottling certain types of contact as a means of self preservation and I think that fits the overall context of our discussion better than the adverse defensive reads or positioning you have lifted for the above.

FWIW, as a mortal I was guilty of missing loads of tackles playing regular and occasional rugby until the age of 24. Unlike Dixon, I was unpaid, strictly amateur, had limited coaching and was average at best, but looking back I think I was more committed and aggressive defensively.

Perspective is needed here. He is a professional sportsman for our team in arguably the toughest physical sport in the world. He came here and wanted to be fullback and we indulged him. Flashes of brilliance, coupled with embarrassing and very costly errors. Wembley proved his Waterloo in this pivotal position. For me, he needed to show more defensively aggressive intent from the get go, run his red and white blood to water and bely his small stature in defence like John Boudebza currently and Roger Millward historically.

In my view only, I now regard his time in A Rovers shirt as a litany of silly errors and persistent defensive frailties, interspersed with the odd flash of magic brilliance. He is a liability and an asset in equal measure. When you don't know which Dixon will turn up from one game to the next, he is a risk too far for me in what may possibly be an uncomfortable dogfight in the middle 8s come season end.

Would you class Sam Tomkins in the same mould? He too dodges the odd high ball, he's pretty rubbish in defence and avoids direct contact by dodging elusively with ball in hand.

I'm being a bit contrary in the above statement as I do agree Dixon looks a worse player this year than he did in his spell at FB last year. But in essence Tomkins is an attacking FB in a very similar manner (admittedly he's better at it), great going forward, gash in defence and scared of the bomb.

At this moment in time I wouldn't pick Dixon, which is a 180 turn around from my earlier viewpoints but he looks a bit shot to me, not cowardly just lacking the confidence he once had.

I always thought Dixon throws himself into tackles never bottles it and isn't scared of catching a high ball the problem is he does drop a few and gets steamrolled in the tackle because of his size but I've watched him chase down a few players for try saving tackles and on the flip side we had caro who had the size that Dixon didn't but was half the player plus the nightmare he had at Wembley he kept looking for the ball he didn't hide and IMO deserves credit for that

I think you have hit the nail on the head there Barham. Dixon is the very definition of a confidence player and at this moment in time his confidence is shot to pieces. In your comparison with Tompkins I can see where you are coming from, but for every error that Tompkins makes I would guess that he would make 3 times as many good plays resulting in tries or his team winning the match. I would say that Dixon is completely the other way round and for each good thing that he does he costs us three tries at the other end of the field.

For me I think Dixon needs to learn how to relax and to play under pressure, he tries to do everything at 100 miles an hour when he makes a mistake he often tends to try too hard and then compounds this with error upon error. He needs to learn from his mistakes, good players learn from their mistakes and correct them and reduce or eliminate the errors.

I said in the pub at Wembley before the game that we needed to play Dixon rather than Cockayne because he could win you the match and I also said that he could lose us the match, as it turned out the latter was true and he had a shocker. You can see at this moment in time why Chester (whose job was on the line) and Poching (who was trying to create an impression ) didn’t pick him early in the season.

For me I would not bin him. I would take him out and put Oakes in for the next two games to give him experience. I would then take Oakes back out because I think that young player like him needs nurturing, he can the go back to the academy and put it to practice the skill he has learnt by player for the first team. I would then give Dixon a game to prove himself with the added incentive of additional games if he performs. I would keep rotating Dixon and Oakes this way, that way it gives both and incentive to play and takes each one out of the firing line from time to time.

Dixon needs to work on the flaws in his game. I would still however use him in the Middle 8s especially against the championship teams where his speed and footwork would be deadly and hopefully by then he will be a more confident player.

Tomkins has also played in a far better team than us, this makes a massive difference, Dixon makes an error for us and its a try, in a better team they defend it and it goes without incident.