As the first (and currently only) premiership captain of the Adelaide Football Club, Mark Bickley holds a special place in Crows history. Bickley’s resume includes 272 AFL games, two premierships and a place in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, but his decorated career had humble beginnings … 

The Bickley family hails from Port Pirie, where Mark’s football career began …
Auskick wasn’t around when I was a kid. The first opportunity you had to play footy back then was Under-10s or Under-13s. When I was five or six-years-old, I would get changed into my gear and go to the games but it was about two years before my mum would actually let my coach put me on the ground. Most weekends ended in tears for me because I never got a game, but eventually I was allowed to play and I went through the grades from there.

In 1988, a 19-year-old Bickley headed to the big smoke to trial with SANFL club North Adelaide, but things didn’t work out as he’d hoped …
Port Pirie was in North Adelaide’s zone. I’d played a couple of seasons of A-grade footy in the country and was invited to train with the Roosters. I took some time off from work in my job as an apprentice electrician and spent a month in Adelaide. I played some trial games, but at that stage North was really strong. They’d won the flag in 1987 and I was there the following pre-season. I really didn’t get much of a look in during the trial games, so I decided to go back to the country and play another year there.

The 1988 season proved a success for the small, but courageous midfielder. He won a senior premiership with local club, Solomontown, and also became the youngest-ever winner of the Madigan Medal as the best and fairest player of the Spencer Gulf Football League …
I was fortunate enough to win a flag and the association medal. I thought that would be a good full-stop on my country career, and that I’d definitely have another crack in Adelaide. Fortunately, I got a call from South Adelaide who was keen for me to come and try out. North was happy for South to play the $2,000 transfer fee to get me out of their zone. John Reid was coach of South at the time. They were the opposite of North and had only won one game the previous (1988) season. I would’ve struggled to make North’s league side, but I was able to play league footy from day one at South. I played two years there before the Crows were formed.

Bickley was invited to train with the newly-formed Adelaide Football Club ahead of its debut AFL season, but it took him the whole pre-season to convince coach Graham Cornes that he deserved a spot and was one of the last players selected in the inaugural squad …
I think the initial training squad was close to 70 guys. The numbers were reduced weekly from October onwards. The Crows picked 42 guys and gave 36 of them contracts. There were six players, including me, who didn’t receive a contract, so I was in the bottom six based on that, as was Matthew Liptak. Over the course of the summer, we were able to fight, hang in there and eventually got on the main list.

At the age of 21, Bickley made his AFL debut against Essendon at Windy Hill …
It was our first-ever game in Melbourne because we’d played at home in Round One and Three and been to Sydney in between. It was at a suburban ground in Windy Hill and it was quite hostile. We lost quite significantly, but it was still very memorable from a personal point of view. Your debut is always special when you finally get to the level you want to get to. It was a baptism of fire for our Club. I think we won the next week, but then we went to Perth to play West Coast and lost by 20 goals. A week or so later, we went to Moorabbin and lost by 20 goals again. It was a similar story in Geelong, so there were a lot of beltings in there.

We just struggled to translate our good form at Footy Park into wins on the road. At that time, I was just so happy just to be playing AFL and that might’ve been reflective of the group. We were disappointed when we had those 20-goal losses, but it didn’t cut us as much as it should’ve and that’s probably why we got some frightful beltings early on. After a while, we realised we needed to do much more than make up the numbers and play AFL games. We decided we wanted to be successful and that we were good enough to be successful. That change in mindset probably occurred towards the end of 1991 and into 1992. In 1993 we had a breakout year and made the Preliminary Final.

Bickley made a name for himself as a small defender in his first two seasons with the Crows before breaking into the midfield in ‘93’. He was one of the Adelaide’s most consistent performers. Although he did not win a best-and-fairest, he was runner-up in 1993, third in 1992 and in the top 10 in 11 of his 13 seasons. Even in his final season (2003) he remained a force, finishing fourth. Bickley was also was a three-time Best Team Man winner (1992, 1993 and 2000). He took over the captaincy from Tony McGuinness ahead of the 1997 season …
I certainly didn’t have captaincy aspirations when I started because I was flat out just trying to get a game. In ‘93’ when I started to play some good footy and finished in the top couple of the best and fairest, I realised that Tony McGuinness, Chris McDermott and Andrew Jarman weren’t going to be around forever. The next group of players coming through were all around my age. I’d always wanted to have an element of control or influence over the group. At that stage, the captain was usually the best player in the team and there was much less responsibility in the role than there is today. Whilst I was captain, as a Club we had a ‘leadership group’, which is commonplace in the AFL now. We had guys like Nigel Smart, Rod Jameson and David Pittman, and a young Mark Ricciuto, Shaun Rehn and Ben Hart. In 1997 and 1998, those players were as influential as leaders as I was, just without the titles.

Led by this core group of players, the Crows made the competition stand up and take notice in 1997, beating St Kilda in the Grand Final to secure their first-ever premiership …
After missing the finals in 1994, 1995 and 1996, there was a ‘clean out’, for the want of a better word, at the Club. We felt this sense of responsibility, that if we were going to be successful it would be that group of leaders that made it happen. You can’t discount the quality of players we had in our squad either. Our young players were Andrew McLeod, Simon Goodwin, Tyson Edwards, Mark Ricciuto and Kane Johnson. Then there was also a mature group, who had been there from the start and were all in their late-20s and settled in their lives on and off the field.

Malcolm Blight was obviously very influential. We’d had a lot of chopping and changing under Graham Cornes and Robert Shaw. ‘Blighty’ produced a game plan that was quite simple. He made us follow it rigorously and maintained very high standards. When it did start to sink in and we became good at executing it, we started to get really good results.

Bickley recalls a famous and pivotal moment that helped change the fortunes of Adelaide’s ‘97’ season, which got off to a lacklustre start …
There are lots of stories about Blighty. I think he was just really hard on his players, that’s the main one. Our pre-seasons were really tough. Neil Craig oversaw them and we were a super fit team. When things were going well, Blighty would be hard on us to make sure we kept playing well. Then there were times we thought we would get a bake and he was really calm with us.

The most memorable moment was after we lost the first-ever Showdown in 1997. It put us 1-3 for the season. We thought we were going to get a roast, but Blighty came in and wrote the number 18 on the whiteboard. He said, ‘Yeah, we haven’t got off to the start we wanted … but forget about that. We can’t impact what’s happened in the last four games. The only thing we can control is what happens in the next 18 games’. We walked into the game review thinking we were going to get baked and walked out with a spring in our step, thinking we had 18 games to improve on our one win.

Fortunately, we did that. The next week, we played the Western Bulldogs, who had won four out of four, and got on a roll and won the next five or six-in-a-row. Blighty just had a really good feel for the group. He could be really hard and strong on players, which didn’t always endear him to the group, but he also knew when to have a bit of fun. It was really enjoyable playing under Blighty.

In 1998, Adelaide defied expectations to go back-to-back and beat the fancied North Melbourne in the Grand Final …
We didn’t know if we could do it again. We knew we had a good group in 1997 and we’d been without Tony Modra, Mark Ricciuto and Peter Vardy in the Grand Final. We had two All Australians in ‘97’ and they were Modra and Ricciuto, so we felt there was some improvement in the group.

While we didn’t dominate in 1998, once we got back to the finals we felt really comfortable. It was great for us to be back on Grand Final day right away. We played North Melbourne, who had been even more successful than us in the 1990s. They won the flag in 1996 and then again in 1999. Some people said we were lucky that we met another inexperienced side in St Kilda in ‘97’, but when we came up against the Kangaroos in ‘98’ there was none of that. They were at full strength and in good form. Beating them gave us some real credibility.

I remember the feeling straight after the game … the sheer exhilaration. When the siren goes, you just run and hug the closest person to you. Then you get to each teammate and congratulate them. You have different bonds with every player. For guys like Nigel, ‘Pitto’, ‘Jamo’ and myself, it had been a 7-8-year journey. Then there were other blokes like Ben Marsh, Andrew Eccles and James Thiessen, who were brand new. ‘Goody’ and Kane Johnson had played in two flags in 40-odd games. In 1998, there was certainly excitement for ‘Roo’ and ‘Vards’, who had missed out the year before. We felt indebted to those guys, that once we got back there we needed to let them share in the feeling of what it was like to win one.

He was so eager to get his hands on the premiership cup again, he forgot to grab his medallion. You’ll notice ‘Bicks’ is the only player without a medal around his neck in the photos of the players holding aloft the cup on the dais in ‘98’ …
I was the last player to be called up and they gestured for me to take the cup, so I grabbed it and we all started celebrating on the dais. The guy was still standing there holding the medallion out for me, but I didn’t realise. Andrew McLeod had to come over to me and remind me to grab it. There are actually photos from the day of Andrew grabbing me by the jumper and telling me to get my medal!

The words ‘two-time premiership captain’, or simply ‘two-time’ as the players would say, immediately follow Bickley’s name whenever it is written. The achievement puts the South Australian in elite company, but to ‘Bicks’ the title of ‘premiership player’ is more important …
It’s not something I think about a lot. You get reminded of it constantly. I’m just privileged, I guess. There were five or six blokes, who were just as instrumental in leading us to that victory, and it was the result of the effort of the whole group. I just feel fortunate that I was selected as the captain at the start of the 1997 season. I’m more just proud to have been involved in it. There are so many players, who have long and brilliant careers but never get a chance to experience it.

Forget about being the captain, just being a premiership player is the greatest thing to take home when you finish your footy career.

However, being a premiership captain did pay dividends for the reliable onballer, as he recalls in a very funny Grand Final day story …
After our Grand Final win in ‘97’, we obviously went out celebrating. At the end of the night, I was outside looking for a taxi and one tooted at me. I went over to the taxi and the driver said, ‘Get in and I’ll drop you back to the hotel’. It turns out this taxi driver had picked Malcolm Blight up after he won the Brownlow Medal in 1978. The driver said he’d followed Blighty ever since.

Almost 12 months to the day when we won the ‘98’ premiership, the same taxi driver was outside a similar establishment, which was one of the popular places to go in Melbourne late at night! The same thing happened, he pulled the taxi up to the curb and told me to get in. I’m not sure how many fares he took that night, or if he spent the whole night looking for me!

It was funny. In ’98’, he didn’t take me straight back to the hotel because the year before none of his workmates believed that he’d picked me up. So this time, he took me back to the taxi base to prove that he’d picked me up. That was obviously before mobile phones with cameras had been invented!

Outside of the premierships, a highlight of Bickley’s career was representing Australia in the International Rules series. He played his first Test in Ireland in 2002 and also had the unusual honour of playing post-retirement at the end of 2003. Unfortunately, the ‘02’ series ended in disaster …
The International Rules series was one of the highlights of my career. I loved it. We got the chance to represent our country. We had a reception with the Prime Minister of Ireland, stayed in a castle and did lots of really cool things. The thing I loved the most was getting to know and enjoying the company of players you didn’t normally see except when you were playing against them. That year, we had two 19-year-olds in the group by the names of Chris Judd and Daniel Kerr. Chris Johnson, Brad Scott, Chad Cornes and Matt Primus from Port, David Neitz, Shane Crawford and Brett Kirk were also part of the group. The camaraderie you develop when you live together on the road for two weeks is brilliant.

Our last game in 2002 was the day before we had to get on a plane and head back to Australia. Unfortunately, I twisted by ankle and got a fracture in my tibia. It put my pre-season back a bit, but I spent a lot of time on the bike with Charlie Walsh. I had a special pedal made up, so I could cycle with my leg in plaster. After I got the cast off, I pretty much played every game and didn’t miss a beat. It was my final year and I was worried that if I’d had an interrupted pre-season, it might affect my ability to perform but I was really happy with how it went. I was comfortable that I contributed strongly in my last year.

Following his retirement from football, Bickley became heavily involved in the media, working in radio and television. However, at the end of 2008 he accepted an offer to return to the Crows as an assistant coach …
I enjoyed working in the media, but I missed the ups and downs that come with footy. When you’re playing footy, each week is different. When I retired, I’d had enough of football. I’d had 13-14 years of playing at the highest level and needed a break. But after five years away from the game, that competitiveness came back and I wanted to be in that team environment and atmosphere that you just don’t get in most jobs. Neil Craig had been speaking to me for a couple of years, trying to entice me into coaching. Eventually, he persuaded me. Once my contract at Channel Nine finished, I moved into coaching and that’s where I am now. I also enjoy spending time with young players and helping them to improve and achieve.

Bickley enjoyed a brief stint as caretaker coach of the Crows following Neil Craig’s departure towards the end of the 2011 season. He remains open to the idea of being a senior coach, but would also be content to continue his role as an assistant coach …
In footy, you can never look too far ahead. We’re in such a results-driven industry that you live and die by what happens week-to-week. As coaches, we’re very much involved in that. If our Club has success, our stocks as coaches rise and you’re in high demand. If the team doesn’t perform, the demand isn’t quite as high!

I just enjoy my coaching and spending time with the players here. We’ve seen some really good development with some of the younger blokes and that’s the main emphasis for me. I enjoyed the caretaker coaching role, but understand the opportunities to do that are few and far between. We’ll see what happens. If it comes up and I’m in demand, I’ll certainly look at it but if not we’ll keep trying to be the best we can here.

The 44-year-old is also kept busy away from the football field as a father of five children. He has three girls, Shayne 18, Natasha 16, and Aleesha 14, and two boys, Tyson 5, and Xavier 2 …
It certainly gives me some balance, and it’s hectic but we love it. The boys are big footy fans. They love coming down to the Club and spending time with the players. The players are very generous with their time with all the young kids who come through the Club.

Tyson is a big Taylor Walker fan, but Xavier loves James Podsiadly. He’s only just learned how to say ‘Podsiadly’! But he’s quite taken by James after only a few months.