Quote: Roy Haggerty "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 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 ?'"
I'm of the opinion that Dawson won't 'make it' at Saints, largely because I disagree with the part of your post that I've put in bold. He is solid enough in defence and has decent hands, but I think he's quite a distance behind the others you mention - particularly Percival - as an attacking player. He just doesn't strike me as having the athleticism required for a three-quarter. Jones isn't especially dynamic but he is direct and he does make breaks. Turner can be disappointing but he has upped his game so far this year (Souths game aside) and is running much harder and making plenty of ground. Percy, for me, has all the elusiveness - and, increasingly, power - of a genuinely top class centre; he just needs to put a stone on, which I suspect he will in time.
Dawson is handy to have around in situations like this, but I don't see him displacing any of the players mentioned above in the pecking order (although he might not need to displace Jones, as KC might want him in the back row).