Australian Football

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Key Facts

Full name
Harold Hickey

Known as
Harry Hickey

Born
19 July 1917

Died
14 September 1999 (aged 82)

Age at first & last AFL game
First game: 20y 5d
Last game: 31y 54d

Height and weight
Height: 175 cm
Weight: 76 kg

Senior clubs
Footscray

Jumper numbers
Footscray: 15, 1, 7

Harry Hickey

Club
League
Career span
Games
Goals
Avg
Win %
AKI
AHB
AMK
BV
FootscrayV/AFL1937-1942, 1944-19481741690.9757%22.677.0066
Total1937-1942, 1944-19481741690.9757%22.677.0066

Pre 1965 stats are for selected matches only

AFL: 4,536th player to appear, 956th most games played, 549th most goals kickedFootscray: 230th player to appear, 44th most games played, 32nd most goals kicked

Footscray recruited Harry Hickey from South Footscray - a local club which Hickey himself had helped to form - and he went on to become an out and out champion. He made his VFL debut in 1937, and during his first couple of years was used mainly as a rover or half forward flanker, in which positions his form was steady but scarcely eye-catching. After being moved into the centre early in the 1939 season, however, he really came into his own, and it is doubtful if there was a better centreman anywhere in Australia than Footscray's Harry Hickey.

Flamboyant, elusive and audaciously skilled, Hickey won his club's best and fairest award on three occasions - in 1939, 1945 and 1948 - and ran second to Collingwood's Marcus Whelan in the 1939 Brownlow Medal count. In 1948 he played a handful of reserves games when recovering from injury and managed to pick up enough votes to finish second in the competition's best and fairest award, the Gardiner Medal. A Big V representative in 1941 and 1948, he would doubtless have played for his state on several more occasions had World War II not brought about the suspension of interstate games between 1942 and 1944. 

Captain of the club in 1947, Hickey was a member of the first five Footscray sides to contest the VFL finals, only to suffer the disappointment of bowing out at the first hurdle every time. At the end of the 1948 season, aged 31, and with plenty of good football left in him, he accepted a lucrative offer to coach Rochester in the Bendigo Football League, and after 174 games and 169 goals his VFL career was over.

In May 2002 Harry Hickey's importance in the history of the Bulldogs was emphasised when he was included, albeit in the unaccustomed position of wingman, in the club's official 'Team of the Twentieth Century'.

Author - John Devaney

Sources

Full Points Footy Publications

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.