Quote: Saint Simon "A blind man on a galloping horse can see Dawson isnt good enough for a top side'"
I feel I have to challenge this in the interests of fairness. Dawson's been labelled with this "not good enough" tag since he arrived - possibly as a result of the way he arrived and the coach's comments at the time.
However, while I absolutely agree that he's no Jamie Lyon or Mal Meninga, I just don't see that he's an order of magnitude less able than Jones, Turner or even Percival at the moment. They all have on and off days, and it's not trashing Percival, for example, to say that he should really have taken two tries against Souths and occasionally seems defensively suspect. Likewise Turner can have completely anonymous games where he certainly doesn't run his size. Jones is aggressive, and perhaps the most defensively sound in the middle, but on the edges can get found out positionally, and is not exactly a top-rank attacking threat with ball in hand.
I'm not bashing them - they are what they are : solid, unexciting centres (Percival has potential to excite, but I worry he won't be big enough). As Mugwump pointed out on another thread, the salary cap prevents us from having a star pack (which we do have) AND star backs (which we don't).
So how is Dawson significantly worse ? I've seen him play plenty now, and he is not noticeably weaker in defence than the others, and not noticeably less threatening in attack than the others.
Is this a case of give a dog a bad name and confirmation bias will follow ?