PORT ADELAIDE senior assistant coach Matthew Nicks says forward Charlie Dixon got reward for effort in his five-goal haul against the Western Bulldogs on Sunday.

Dixon had 14 disposals and five marks as well as two tackles and four spoils in his best game of the season.

Rain, wind and freezing conditions made it a difficult day for big forwards in Ballarat but it didn’t seem to bother Dixon, and Nicks says it was pleasing to see the 27-year-old do well.

“You smile because you know how hard he works,” Nicks said at a press conference on Monday.

“Everyone’s talking about the ability to mark and convert and Charlie has done more work than anyone on that.

“I thought he competed in the air when he didn’t mark the ball, it was a fantastic contest, he crunched a few packs and brought the ball to ground but he got some reward for work and hopefully he learns from that and keeps working on it.

“He’s a powerhouse, he’s hard to stop if he can get himself in those positions.”

Paddy Ryder’s return from injury freed Dixon up to remain in the forward line, after he was forced to step into the ruck in the All-Australian’s absence last week.

Nicks said it wasn’t the only reason why Dixon did well.

“No doubt it helped him but he has had a lot of games like that throughout the year,” he said.

“It does come back to his craft, working on those smaller parts of his game.

“Eventually it’ll come and it’ll reward you and I think he got some of that on the weekend.”

Ryder’s return was somewhat of a shock to some who considered he would miss more than one week with a hip flexor complaint.

He had 33 hit-outs in 58% game time and was rested towards the end of the game when the Power had sealed the result.

“When the game gets to a stage where you’ve got yourself in a position where you’re going to win the game you want to look after the right players,” Nicks said.

“Someone like Paddy Ryder for example, you get him off.

“He’d done enough to that point and while percentage is still really important, if we can get some of those players off it’s a smart thing to do and I thought we did that well towards the end of the game.”

Ryder’s successful return was mirrored by the comeback from a knee injury of defender Tom Jonas.

The Power’s defensive general had surgery to remove a lose fragment in his knee early this month and was not expected to play for at least another week.

“It’s really good news for us, they both got through,” Nicks told the media.

“Coming in we were confident they would, our doctors, physios said they would be fine so it’s a credit to them that we were able to get some real quality players back in.

“Those two are really important to us so to get them back, for both of them to get through the game and for both to perform really well, that’s a good sign going forward.”

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