There's no way that marking was a realistic alternative to spoiling in that incident. Maybe he could've tried to aim it better, but I reckon if Dawson made a poor decision in that passage it was probably following the ball into the centre, instead of running back to protect the top of the 50. Then again, it's hard to blame him for following the ball, given there were 3 unmarked GWS players in the middle. Who was watching that space?
Over the years, I've paid out on Dawson as much as anyone, but to my mind he made a solid contribution on the weekend. It's only one game, but I thought it showed drastic improvement on previous form, in terms of all those things I used to bag him for. Not everything he did was perfect, but that was true of every player on the ground, even Hill.
BTW,
here's the link if anyone's interested:
