Jeers turn into cheers for Vickery ...
Ty Vickery has taken eight years to reach 100 games but is in career-best formHerald-Sun
August 29, 2015TY Vickery can solve a Rubik’s Cube with a few flicks of the wrist.
But while the Richmond forward can navigate the world’s best-selling puzzle, the riddle that is his AFL career has proved more difficult.
Tonight at the MCG against Essendon, Vickery will play his 100th game — a milestone that’s taken eight years to achieve after he was taken by the Tigers at No.8 in the 2008 national draft.
It’s been a rollercoaster journey that’s juggled six-goal bags and best-on-ground honours with brain fades and multiple-game suspensions.
Vickery’s friends and teammates say he’s as maligned as anyone in the game, disliked even by sections of the Tiger army. There have been dark times, moments where he’s felt like the negative energy was enveloping him, but with maturity has come a thick skin and stronger resolve.
He confronts the Bombers in arguably the form of his life, having kicked 10 goals straight in the past fortnight while ranking above average in marks (6.5 a game), score involvements (6.
and goals (3) over the past month.
That’s Vickery the player. But Vickery the person, like the Rubik’s Cube he’s mastered, is more complex.
As one teammate told the Herald Sun
this week, if you met Vickery in a social setting, one of the last things you’d assume would be that he is a footballer.
The 25-year-old lives in Clifton Hill with his fiancee, Russian-born Australian professional tennis player Arina Rodionova. The pair will marry in December, a couple of years after meeting at a fancy dress party.
He’s got his teeth into a law degree and loves a debate almost as much as his cats Rambo and Dozor.
There’s the obsession with Sylvester Stallone’s 1980s action character, John Rambo, while Vickery is also a taekwondo black belt who won a national championships silver medal at 13.
He eats at the same place every night before a game, chowing down the sizzling Mongolian beef and rice hotplate - where he eats only the meat and rice, everythnig else is left on the plate - at a Vietnamese restaurant in Abbotsford.
It’s this intriguing, private life that stands in sharp contrast to the occasionally awkward, yet influential goalkicker, who has somehow become a magnet for criticism.
Dealing with that has been just as big a challenge as learning the AFL craft, according to his father and Tigers’ boxing coach John Vickery.
“It used to affect him and he and I sat down a lot to discuss it,” Vickery Sr said.
“You’ve just got to take no notice of it and he doesn’t. Sometimes I ask him, ‘How you going?’ and he says, ‘I’m not listening to it, Dad. I don’t care. I’m just going to play footy’.
“He seems to be a far happier bloke now than what he was a few years ago. He was in a dark spot there for a bit. He was always a quiet kid, never did anything wrong or said anything wrong. I don’t think he swore until he started hanging around with Jakey King.”
King stuck up for Vickery on the field and in retirement remains one of his fiercest allies.
“I like to compare and I compare him to Kurt Tippett — same height, same position, same everything,” King said.
“Tyrone is twice the player Kurt Tippett is and on half the money but 10 times the crap. It’s unfair on the poor kid and I think he’s been extremely hard done by, the way he gets treated.”
Coach Damien Hardwick this week said in-house opinion was all that mattered for Vickery, while one of his current teammates shook his head at the criticism arrowed his friend’s way.
“Even some of the Richmond fans can’t even have him. He’s not well-liked,” he said.
“He’s not going to tell you he’s a fan favourite. He’s well aware of his standing in the footy world, but he’s not worried about it and at the moment it’s obviously not affecting his footy.”
Vickery played junior footy for East Brighton Vampires. The club’s long-serving president Steve Hill has unwittingly found himself aboard the Vickery rollercoaster.
“I only get calls about him when he’s f....d up. Funnily enough, the phone has been quiet lately,” Hill said.
“It’s funny. He does some terrific things and people only hang on to the negatives with him.”
Hill’s mobile ran hot after Vickery’s well-publicised hit on West Coast legend Dean Cox last year.
Vickery copped a four-game ban and mountains of criticism from players, fans and the media.
Those close to him say he was mortified by his actions and insist he didn’t deliberately try to hurt Cox. Vickery publicly and privately apologised to Cox in the days after.
“If the Cox incident had happened two years earlier it would have got to him emotionally and I think he would have struggled, but the person that he’s become he’s a man in the way he goes about things in every way now,” King said.
The former small forward, along with another ex-Tiger Dan Jackson, tried to “build a shield” around their mate in their playing days.
“If it’s just someone’s opinion then we try to get him to brush it off and forget it and to not listen to anyone outside the club,” King said.
“He wishes things were different, but seeing him grow all the way through it, he’s become such a great person because of it all. He’s a beautiful human being.
“But like most smart people, he can’t build anything. He’s hopeless. So anything from Ikea, I get a phone call from him straight away.”
But Vickery is building.
Overlooked for the last two games of last season and slow to get going in this one, Vickery’s marking and goalkicking power is making an increasing difference to a Richmond side no rival would fancy playing this September.
In 2007 Vickery got a Chinese tattoo on his arm that translates as “Live Free”.
It’s taken much of the eight years since but now, more than ever, he’s doing exactly that.
http://www.news.com.au/national/ty-vickery-has-taken-eight-years-to-reach-100-games-but-is-in-career-best-form/story-e6frfkp9-1227502958593
