ESTIMATED READING TIME: 4 minutes, 21 seconds.

TOM Hickey has unfinished business. In fact, such is his motivation to succeed, the 23-year-old feels as if his AFL journey has only just begun.

A promising volleyball player as a junior, Hickey’s career stifled after some promising early season form last year, going down with a knee injury that eventually forced him under the knife.

“I was carrying the injury for two or three years and it really hindered my ability to do leg weights, jump and run out games,” Hickey told SAINTS.com.au.

“For a lot of the time my main setback was jumping and changing direction, so I have been doing plenty of straight line running lately.”

Whether this injury that has plagued him in his time at the Saints was a direct result of volleyball’s hard surface is irrelevant, he said.

Become a Saints member TODAY! Click HERE or call 1300 467 246.

What matters now for Hickey is balancing the need to bulk up, against the understandable requirement to run out games as the team’s primary ruckman.

“I’ve been put through a good mini pre-season for the last month where they’ve really tried to get volume of running into me.”

“I ended up putting on about six kilograms in the off-season and got up to 101kgs. Obviously when I started running I began to lose a bit of that. I am sitting at the 99kg or 100kg mark at the moment, which is heavier than the weight I played at last year.

“It’s just a matter of balancing my running loads with my weights so that I can run out a full game.”

When Hickey was drafted to the Gold Coast Suns in November 2010, he weighed in at 87kgs. Now, following a succession of arduous pre-seasons and a leg program that doesn’t prioritise injury management over strength, Hickey’s objective is to match it with the biggest bodies in the AFL.

“I would love to get up to 105kgs but that probably won’t be for another couple of years,” he said.

“The short-term goal is to get up to 100kgs by round one so I’m still doing extra weights and gym at the moment.

“I feel I am a lot stronger in the gym but now I’m hoping to translate that into being stronger in games.”

Exactly how beneficial this fitness regime has been probably won’t be known until the home and away season kicks off against GWS on 5 April, however Hickey expects to get a fair gauge of where he’s at physically slightly earlier than that.

“At the moment my aim is to be back for the second game of the NAB Challenge against Essendon,” he said.

“I’ll be back into main training next week, if not the week after, and then I’ll get a good two or three weeks of solid training before the NAB Challenge. Unfortunately I won't be available for the intra-club match on February 21.

“I’ve been running reasonably well, I’m starting to get more confidence in my knee, and I’m looking forward to getting back out there as soon as I can… Hopefully by the time the season comes around I will be primed.”

Hickey’s optimism is based on the fact that he knows his best football can compete with anyone’s. It’s an inner belief that was realised following the Saints hard-fought win over GWS in round two last year – a match in which Hickey starred up against Shane Mumford.

“That game gave me confidence to know that I can match it with some of the best ruckman in the competition,” he said.

“It was a driving factor throughout my rehab that if I get fit, I can hold down that ruck spot.

“Knowing that deep down that I am capable of playing good league footy - if I get my body right - motivates me to train hard. I guess I will leave no stone unturned.”

Hickey’s 30 games have yielded just 10 goals, three of which were against the Giants in that encounter last March.

It’s a dimension of play that the left-footer has focussed on since arriving at the Saints at the beginning of 2013 and intends to develop further this year.

“I would like to be an attacking ruckman and my aim is to push forward and have at least one shot on goal per game,” he said.

“That’s one of my personal goals for this year, to do some damage on the scoreboard.”

Adam Skrobalak is St Kilda’s new ruck coach, and while Hickey hasn’t spent a great deal of time with him due to his rehab, he’s already made an impression at Linen House Centre.

“Jason Holmes, Billy Longer and Lewis Pierce really like him. He’s really passionate and is a great teacher which is always important. I’m sure I will be working with him more as I reach full fitness,” Hickey said.

“They are going pretty hard at it and I watch them pretty closely, especially Holmesy, because he’s so new to the game. I help him out with video footage and going through his edits which I enjoy.

“We are a team within a team because ideally we’d like to have two of us playing in the one side.”

Every good team needs a good ruckman, and there is nothing that Luke Dunstan and co would appreciate more than Tom Hickey feeding them at stoppages for the next decade.