“Brutal”: Dixon recalls how Port Adelaide career ended

Charlie Dixon has recalled the exit meeting that brutally ended his 14-year AFL career.

It came at the conclusion of the 2024 season when he was coming out of contract with Port Adelaide, on the back of a few injury-interrupted campaigns.

Dixon, who was 34 at the time, entered the meeting with the feeling that he still had more to offer the Power and coach Ken Hinkley.

He admits his axing - which came before his retirement announcement - was a “brutal reminder” as to how cut-throat the AFL industry is.

“I had an idea about what I wanted to do and I voiced that to the club,” Dixon said on SEN SA’s The Run Home. “I think I can do this again.

“You go in there, the 10 minutes go by, and you’re walking out with a garbage bag full of your stuff and cameras in your face asking what are you doing.

“It wasn’t great. You go through your stages, I got really angry. I destroyed myself, my body, for nine years for the football club and it took them 10 minutes to get rid of me.

“I was pretty wound up. It was a brutal reminder that this is a business and there’s no feeling, there’s no mates in it, I don’t know.”

Dixon reflected on a club catch-up with Hinkley last year where they exchanged a few gags regarding the situation.

The former Gold Coast forward reckons he might have helped Kenny hang on to his job for longer if he played on.

“I look at it now and Kenny said to me last year when I went in and saw them, ‘I saved you from playing this year’, and I said, ‘No, I would have saved you’,” Dixon laughed.

“But that’s the relationship I had with Kenny. He said, ‘You would have played every game’, and I said, ‘Yes, and I think we would have won more games (nine wins) than you did’.

“That’s who I am, I’m a competitor, and I like to think I could have made a difference. Whether I could have or not, I’ll never know.

“I thought I would have at least had the choice myself, and I didn’t.”

Dixon, an All-Australian in 2020, finished his career with 221 games and 357 across 14 seasons with the Suns and Power.

He spent nine seasons at Port where he played 156 games and booted 263 majors, leading the goal kicking on three occasions.