Less than 40 miles separate Radcliffe Borough’s homely little Stainton Park and Liverpool’s world-famous Anfield, yet it’s been a long journey for West Brom’s Craig Dawson.
The in-form centre-half plays there for the first time tomorrow as part of an Albion back-line that has not conceded a goal in its last two league games.
Dawson’s form alongside the majestic Joleon Lescott has been a major factor in that – as it has in the awarding of a new three-year contract which he signed earlier this week.
The Rochdale-born defender is currently riding the crest of a wave and for the first time in his career, the last four years of which have been spent as a bit-part player at The Hawthorns, he has the look of an established Premier League centre-back.
International club colleagues Gareth McAuley and Jonas Olsson find themselves watching Dawson play with all the commitment and physicality that for so long made the middle of the Baggies’ back four their domain, and theirs alone.
Yet it was not always thus. As a young man studying his A Levels, a life in the Department of Work and Pensions and a non-league career with Radcliffe beckoned. He was happy but his football dreams looked over before they even started.
“I had a few little trials with a few clubs but it never worked out for me. I was probably a late developer,” says Dawson.
“To be honest I went to Radcliffe because my friend’s dad was the chairman and he asked me to go down and train and get fit for pre-season.
“I was there for a couple of weeks and they signed me on and I played every game that season. I never thought anything of it because I was doing my A levels at the time. Then there was a bit of speculation about clubs coming in and after that it just set off.”
Rochdale were the most interested and a move to Spotland seemed both logical and convenient: “ I was literally 100 yards down the road from the club at my mum and dad’s.
“I managed to keep it quiet from all my friends who were big Rochdale fans but when I signed there it was great. It’s great to sign for your local club and Keith Hill and David Flitcroft worked so hard with me.
“They took me out of non-league, where professional football wasn’t even in my thoughts, and they gave me an opportunity to play professionally and worked with me tirelessly.”
He repaid that investment, both in terms of the quality of performances which kept him in the side for the entirety of his first season, and financially as Albion were persuaded to sign him in August 2010 and loan him straight back.
Soon, with just two seasons of senior football under his belt, he was making his Premier League debut in a 3-0 defeat at Swansea.
If that was frustrating, so too were the months that followed as he struggled to break up the Olsson-McAuley duopoly. A short loan at Bolton in the spring of 2013 kept him ticking over.
And finally, after another stop-start campaign, it appeared as though he’d had enough of being the good lad who was easy to drop.
He handed in a transfer request and newly-promoted Burnley came calling, again and again and again.
New head coach Alan Irvine promised Dawson he’d get his opportunity and he's taken it.
His first Albion goal came against the Clarets last Sunday and tomorrow he could be marking the mercurial Mario Balotelli. If the Italian has taken a circuitous route to Anfield, Dawson’s has been so winding he never thought hed get there.
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