Tom Hickey, professional footballer for hours as required and a doting new father every other waking moment, will be both proud and peeved when the Weest Coast Eagles’ AFL season kicks off on Sunday.

Hickey, in his second season with the club, will play his 100^th AFL game against Melbourne at Optus Stadium.

But not even his wife Chloe or son Lou, born last August, can attend. They will be restricted to watching on television at home as part of the AFL’s ban on spectators due to the coronavirus.

There will be no banner to celebrate his milestone, and his parents will not be able to fly from Brisbane. But at least, as the dry-witted ruckman says, it’ll be “one to remember”.

Known as “Reg” to his teammates, Hickey, who turned 29 earlier this month, has worked his way through 10 years and three clubs to reach 100 AFL games.

Son of a 10-year A-Grade Brisbane rugby league player, he tried his hand at basketball, rugby union, water polo, athletics and volleyball in his youth, and was primarily a volleyball player. He was a State representative tagged for higher honors.

But during his last term of school at Brisbane’s Iona College in 2008 he joined two close mates, still good friends today, in a school game of Australian football. He was 17.

His mates, too, went on to play AFL football, and it will please Hickey no end that he has played more games than both of them.

Who were they? Collingwood’s Josh Thomas, who has played 89 games at Collingwood and ex-Carlton and Brisbane player Tom Bell, who played 72 games.

Hickey’s sporting focus changed when, after Thomas and Bell convinced him to try football, he was spotted by AFL Queensland scouts and invited to join the League’s AFLQ rookie search program.

In 2009 he joined Morningside Football Club, the junior home of Brisbane champion Michael Voss, and was runner-up in the League Under 18 B&F Medal as his side won the premiership. 

He represented Queensland Under 18s as an over-age player in 2010, and played a key role in Morningside’s senior QAFL premiership win in which they came from 20 points down at three-quarter time.

Hickey’s opponents in the beaten Labrador side were 291-game St Kilda, Hawthorn and Sydney ruckman Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt, and 75-game Brisbane, St Kilda and Richmond player Trent Knobel.

Invited to what is now the draft combine, he could hardly have been more impressive. He  was the best-performed ruckman in the agility test, equal second-best among ruckmen in the endurance beep test, and second overall outright in the ‘clean hands’ test.

He was signed by the Gold Coast Suns for their 2011 entry to the AFL and debuted in round 22 against Adelaide at Metricon Stadium, sharing ruck duties with Josh Fraser.

It was the same game in which Joel Tippett, brother of Kurt Tippett, made his debut, and Nathan Ablett, former Geelong premiership player, played the first of two games for the Suns.   

On the same weekend Aaron Mullett debuted for North Melbourne, Ayce Cordy and Jason Tutt debuted for the Western Bulldogs, and Tom Young debuted for Collingwood.

As Hickey posts his ‘ton’, Mullett has played 98 games, and Cordy, Tutt and Young are out of the AFL system after 27, 40 and 28 games respectively.

On the same weekend as Hickey’s debut only six current Eagles played in the Round 22 win over Essendon at Subiaco. Andrew Gaff played his 12^th game, Luke Shuey his 26^th, Nic Naitanui his 50^th, Will Schofield his 54^th,m Josh Kennedy his 85^th and Shannon Hurn his 93^rd.

Hickey played 12 games at Gold Coast (2011-12) before being recruited by St Kilda. He played 67 games with the Saints (2013-18) but, although contracted there for 2019, happily accepted a fresh start in Perth at the end of the 2018 season.

He played 20 games including his first two finals with West Coast last year.

Despite his long journey to 100 games he will play his seventh Round 1 game on Sunday. Only in 2015 and 2018 did he not play the season opener since his debut.

As Hickey enjoys a milestone he never expected to reach, Tim Kelly will become the 249^th West Coast player all-time and only the seventh player to wear the #11 jumper made famous by 2014 Brownlow Medallist Matt Priddis and 1992-94 premiership star Ashley McIntosh.

It is one of only two jumper numbers that boasts two members of the Eagles 200-Game club.

The other is #2, which was the property of 1992-94 premiership hero Dean Kemp and 2018 premiership player Mark LeCras.

Ironically, McIntosh and Priddis both started their AFL career in a different number. McIntosh wore #53 in his first 17 games in 1991, and Priddis wore #45 in his first two games in 2006.

Priddis ranks eighth in all-time AFL history for games in #11 that is headed by Carlton’s Bruce Doull (329), North Melbourne’s Glenn Archer (311) and Alastair Lynch (306) of Fitzroy/Brisbane.

The other five players to wear #11 for West Coast have been first game team member Peter Davidson (2 games), Kevin Caton (1), Todd Breman (23) and Travis Gaspar (7).

Kelly will take a streak of 48 consecutive AFL games since debut into his first Eagles game.

Brisbane’s Cam Rayner, the #1 pick in the 2017 National Draft in which Kelly was taken at #24 by Geelong, is the only member of the Class of 2017 not to have missed a game. Rayner has played 46 games in a row.

Kelly’s 48-game streak is the longest live streak among current Eagles players, ahead of Jack Darling (34), Luke Shuey (31), Liam Ryan (31) and Dom Sheed (30).