Rebuilding Charlie Dixon: How a kiss signalled he was back and a US pre-season trip confirmed it after a horrific ankle injury
The first sign Charlie Dixon was on the way back had nothing to do with a mark and everything to do with a kiss. We go inside the rebuild of Port Adelaide’s big man who is grabbing the AFL by the scruff of the neck.
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It was a kiss, rather than a pack mark or a 50m goal, that first told Port Adelaide’s fitness boss Ian McKeown that Charlie Dixon was on the way back.
“Do you remember the (SANFL) Magpies game when he blew the kiss at the Redlegs fans at Alberton?,” McKeown said.
“That was a very good moment for everybody, I was there watching his every move, I can’t help myself, but you saw he had confidence in himself and in his body and you knew he’d come a long way just to get to there.”
That was in June 2019, but the moment McKeown knew Dixon was officially back was five months later when the key forward reported for day one of pre-season training in November.
“That was awe-inspiring to be honest, the shape he was in, the way he was back to his brutal best with everything that he does, that was a big moment because you could go ‘s***, we’ve got Charlie back’,” McKeown said.
Dixon, 29, had just spent two weeks in the US on a training camp which is now looking increasingly crucial in having rebuilt his badly broken leg and ankle he hurt in 2018.
With McKeown’s blessing, Dixon joined teammate Travis Boak in working with sports and human movement specialist Austin Einhorn in Santa Cruz and alongside NFL players at the Red Bull High Performance Centre.
Boak had been there before and this year they trained alongside Western Bulldogs superstar Marcus Bontempelli and Gold Coast’s Touk Miller.
“I’ve never met Travis Boak and I feel like I love him,” Dixon’s manager, Peter Blucher, said.
“It’s funny, that Facebook thing that pops up, the last few days for some reason it’s said ‘people you may know – Travis Boak’ and I think to myself ‘I’d love to know him, but I don’t know him.’.
“He’s just been a really good mate and gone on the journey with him (Dixon), and I know Charlie loves him.
“Charlie loves the playing group, he’s very, very close with them, and it’s all been part of a shared motivation to get himself going.
“They’re part of his family; it sounds corny but it’s not, it’s what drives him.
“Kenny (Hinkley) has been very good to him as well, they are very close and Kenny’s the reason he’s in Adelaide.
“He’s had good people around him and just worked his bum off.”
The clock read 3mins 10secs to go in the third quarter of Port Adelaide’s Round 21 clash with West Coast in 2018 when Chad Wingard swung onto his raking left foot inside 50.
Dixon had to make up five metres on Tom Barrass who was playing in front and leapt at the footy, but when he landed his right leg crumpled underneath him and he did not get up.
As he lay there writhing in pain, club doctor Mark Fisher’s right hand went straight up signalling to the bench that it was serious.
“It was like breaking your leg and then taking all the structures around your ankle, snapping them and dislocating them. Really, it’s a car crash injury,” said McKeown, Port Adelaide’s head of high performance.
“It’s devastating, emotionally and physically, and that’s a hard thing to get over.”
It was the sort of injury some players may never come back from.
“Absolutely, it doesn’t happen that often thank goodness, but I’m sure there’s people out there playing footy or other sports who haven’t had the same opportunity that Charlie has to get himself fixed,” McKeown said.
Dixon had surgery within days and so began the slow and painful recovery which pushed him to the mental and physical limit.
It was so basic at first that he simply had to try to walk the length of the room.
“Those first steps are pretty difficult,” McKeown said.
“There are stages he’s had to go through from first getting out of the (moon) boot to then walking normally, not walking with a limp, and that’s a mental challenge.
“If you’ve ever broken an ankle, the amount of times you need it, it makes everyday life hard and then always in the back of your mind is pain or just trying to move properly and that takes a toll on you.
“Every few weeks we’d check in in the doc’s room with him, and one of the big things Charlie and the guys want is to be part of the process, and that not only makes them feel accountable but it makes them feel like they have a purpose and they’re not just Lemmings.
“Without being corny about it, you are rehabbing the player and the human as well as the injury and that’s something Doc Fisher and the rest of the team do fantastically well.”
Port Adelaide’s rehab co-ordinator Daniel Buberis probably saw more of Dixon than anyone else at Alberton for long stretches after his injury and was often on the receiving end of the big man’s anger – in the nicest way possible.
“There were times when he was really in the moment, particularly for those boxing sessions and to be honest I think that was more of an outlet, but in some respects that provided him with some solace to get in there and do what he needed to do,” said Buberis, who became a victim of the AFL’s coronavirus football department crunch in April.
“I’m only a little lad so hitting up against me, I feel it, but that’s relatively speaking.
“In the scheme of things, particularly in the gym, he was lifting some pretty big numbers.
“He’s doing 160-odd kilograms squatting, that’s powerful stuff for a footballer of his magnitude.
“Rehab is a pretty interesting place and to be honest it can be a pretty lonely place, and Charlie was probably in that space for a while.
“But the guy took a lot of ownership in what he did, he obviously had his challenges but in the bigger scheme of things I think he believed if he was able to maintain his physical fitness that he could certainly contribute to the team.
“It was just a matter of him overcoming some of those internal obstacles.
“I don’t take any credit for it, it’s a big team effort, but it’s always good to see guys who have hit their lowest point bounce back 12 months on, it’s good to see he’s believing again.”
Dixon had more surgery in March, 2019, which was a setback and he didn’t return to the AFL field until Round 14 last year.
Hinkley persisted with him for five games – in which he kicked six goals and didn’t look terrible – but wasn’t at his best and the axe came after the Round 18 loss to Richmond.
Dixon later revealed he had not been in the right headspace to do what the team needed.
“I was a bit disappointed because I’m a competitor and I want to play but we had a good chat and at the end of the day I was struggling with some stuff off-field, personal stuff, not footy, which I have done for a while,” he said at the time.
“And my mindset wasn’t right about the team, I wasn’t in the right mindset to be out there and that’s what he (Hinkley) made the call on.
“I had to go back and work on my form and be a good teammate.
“I was able to go back and focus on keeping the forwards together, making sure we’re a unit and bring everyone in before and after goals, that brings you out of your own mindset and allows you to worry about someone else.”
Dixon has been open and brave in sharing his mental demons on the road to recovery and found an outlet away from footy in his passion for restoring cars, which helped him turn things around.
“He’s done it tough but he’s been single-minded in his commitment to get it right, at the expense of basically everything else,” Blucher said.
“He comes from a wonderful family and I think those family values have been really important in helping him through a tough time.
“The other thing that’s helped him is this infatuation he has with cars and all that, that’s been really important as well.”
Dixon played the last four games of the 2019 season and his three goals against Fremantle in Round 23 showed the fire within was still there.
Then he made the decision to go to the US and train in his off-season.
“For Charlie to hear another voice tell him how to move and train and do things well, it’s just a different environment to train in,” McKeown said.
“And that’s been a big thing for Charlie – putting the right people and the right environment around him so he can feel the growth and feel part of it, owning his journey.”
At 200cm and 107kg, Dixon is only slightly lighter this season but McKeown says it’s thanks to strict commitment and discipline, including working with the Power’s runner Chad Cornes in the gym.
“He is a little bit lighter but his usable weight is probably a lot higher, he’s putting it on in the right places and moving well,” McKeown said.
“For a guy who is naturally a little bit heavier, he’s had to forgo a lot and be very disciplined.
“It’s the same for Ollie (Wines) and Pepps (Powell-Pepper) – portion size.
“For the way that they train you would want them to eat a lot more than they do, but they are too good at putting on muscle.
“They’re very blessed that way but they’ve also got to be super disciplined.
“Charlie is outstanding at that, he lives life at an intensity and that shines through with how he trains.
“He and Chad (Cornes) are two peas in a pod, they love their bikes, their own time as much as anybody, and bring a certain intensity to their gym sessions and gravitate towards each other.”
Dixon was running and training fully at the Power’s pre-season camp in Maroochydore, which was a long way from Noosa the year before when his only running was on a weight-bearing treadmill.
His flawless pre-season has flowed into the start of the season proper. Despite missing Round 1 with a minor groin complaint, he leads the Coleman Medal with 11 goals in three games, and his teammates are loving having their key forward up and about again.
“What you see is what you get, he likes his downtime as well and being away with his interest in rebuilding his cars and also loves to get away with his dogs by himself,” Power midfielder Tom Rockliff said.
“But he’s a barometer for us, the energy he brings to training and on game day it’s something that the other guys feed off, his goal celebrations get the guys going and everyone jumps on the back of that.
“It’s been pretty well documented that he’s had his struggles with his leg and a few personal things so he’s worked through them and come out the other side, you can see he’s really happy with life at the moment.
“How he’s performing no doubt helps that but he’s in a really good space on and off the field, and I think he has a really good balance of work/life.
“He’s had an outstanding summer and it’s really good to see him fight back and show the footy world how good of a player he is, there’s no doubt he makes us an exceptional team when he’s playing the way he did on the weekend and hopefully it can continue.”
Dixon kicked 30, 49 and 26 goals in his first three seasons at Port Adelaide before the horrific ankle injury, but when he wasn’t kicking goals he was creating them.
Never during his other battles with niggly injuries did he stop hitting packs, which Hinkley has loved.
Off the field Dixon has also had to shoulder criticism that came with being a marquee recruit from the Gold Coast in 2015, and plenty have lined up to have a crack including veteran football journalist Mike Sheahan who last year labelled Dixon “almost the most overrated player in the competition”.
Now, the consensus on footy talk shows is that Dixon is the best big man in the game and dubbed ‘King Charles’ after his blistering start to the season – and at a time when Nick Riewold points out it has never been harder for key forwards.
“How glad are you that you’re not starting your career now? It’s never been harder to be a key forward, there’s no space,” Riewoldt asked Jonathan Brown on Fox Footy this week.
But Dixon has bucked that trend so far to lead the Coleman Medal from four small to mid-size forwards Tom Papley, Harry Perryman, Charlie Cameron and Chad Wingard.
"King Charles! How good's he lookingâ‰ï¸" #AFLPowersEagles pic.twitter.com/loJuftL1TL
— AFL (@AFL) June 27, 2020
That could be due to his own resurgence but also the way Port Adelaide is playing – fast, aggressive footy and using Dixon as the weapon they recruited him to be.
Now would appear to be the perfect time to strike up talks about extending his contract, which expires this year, but like most players Dixon and Blucher remain in a holding pattern due to the coronavirus crisis that is clouding the future of the competition.
Complicating things even more is that Blucher is unable to even meet with Port Adelaide chiefs who are either interstate or inside the quarantine hub on the Gold Coast, and AFL rules prohibit any face-to-face contact while they’re in the bubble.
So for now, Dixon will just have to keep letting his football do the talking and that continues on Saturday night where his match-up with Brisbane defender Harris Andrews is as tantalising as the main event – first versus third and the winner will be declared a genuine premiership contender.