Excellent article on Picken....
Picken up the pace
The Age
Greg Baum | June 13, 2009
TO GIVE himself a chance to play AFL football, Liam Picken passed up schoolies week and all the other benign excesses of late adolescence. To give himself a chance, he learned a new way of running. To give himself a chance, he did three gruelling, AFL-strength pre-seasons — one with Collingwood and two with the Western Bulldogs — and shrugged off three draft rejections. To give himself a chance, he gave up a well-paid job with the Department of Defence.
What Brent Harvey discovered in Picken's first game, and other accomplished players have learned since — Brett Deledio twice — and all future opponents should note, is that Picken was desperate for his chance and is not going to let anything or one snatch it away again.
His zeal, unflinching and unshakeable, shows in his character. "Grimly determined," says an admiring Williamstown teammate. "He's a very serious kid," said his father, Bill, high-leaping Collingwood legend, now Hamilton farmer. "Not kid, man," he corrected himself, remembering that his youngest son is 22. "Because he's had so many knock-backs, football's moulded his personality." Outwardly, father and son are a contrast. Bill was a laughing cavalier on the field. But he was and remains earnest off it.
Bill and his wife, Julie, are their son's greatest fans of course. But even they had doubts. Asked if he always thought Liam would get his chance, Bill paused, then said: "Probably no. Because the system's so hard. It's just so hard. I didn't think he'd really make it."
Football was blither once. Picken was born the year that his father retired, saw how he was feted at Collingwood functions and grew up with a consciousness of his revered standing. But his immediate inspirations were nearer to home. Before Liam was a teenager, older brother Marcus was recruited to the Brisbane Lions, where he was joined by their first cousin Jonathan Brown, who he remembered from family gatherings. "He was a pretty quick bowler," he said. "You wouldn't want to get in the way."
The Lions would fly the younger Picken to Brisbane for a fortnight every year, whetting his already keen appetite. "I loved it every time," he said.
At 17, Picken kicked five goals for Hamilton against North Gambier in a country grand final at Casterton, a triumph of both skill and evasion. "They ran around trying to belt me in the last quarter because the game was won," he recalled. Paul Cranage, Bill's ex-Collingwood teammate, saw this and recommended Picken junior to Williamstown. As longstanding general manager Brendan Curry remembers it, Picken did his last VCE exam on a Friday and was at Willy training on Monday. Here was half a chance.
On a wintry day at City Oval, Box Hill, the next year, Nathan Buckley and Angelo Lekkas, both returning from long injury breaks, made rare appearances for Williamstown and Box Hill respectively, attracting 5000, who had drained all the beer before half-time. Both were upstaged by a slip of a kid who in the dying seconds took a screamer in the goal-square and kicked the winning goal. It was Picken, in just his third game.
In the next four years, Picken endeared himself utterly to Willy. Last year, he was joint best and fairest, won the players' peer acknowledgement award and was named in the VFL team of the year. But he could not win favour with AFL recruiters.
Collingwood, then aligned to Williamstown, concluded that his kicking was doubtful, also his decision-making, and that he was slow.
This, said Williamstown coach Brad Gotch, was a false impression created by his awkward running style. Picken signed up Bohdan Babijczuk to redesign it. But the Pies were unmoved. So were the Bulldogs when they linked up with Willy.
Williamstown was livid. Curry called the shunning of Picken a "travesty", saying he had seen him repeatedly best AFL-listed players. He looked at him as a new Josh Mahoney, another one-time Willy player who was repeatedly overlooked, but persisted and in 2004 became a premiership player with Port Adelaide.
Picken senior chose not to intercede, figuring that Liam had to make his own name, not prop on his. "Liam's got to row his own boat. I never put any pressure on at all," he said. "The Williamstown football department said to me: 'This kid should be on an AFL list'. So I left it at that."
Gotch said Picken was a rare example of a parent who was not pushy enough. One day, he asked him: "Aren't you going to say anything to me about how he's going?" The Pickens are gentle folk; last Christmas, Julie sent Willy a card to thank it for its care of her son.
The rebuffs hurt Picken junior, but hardened him, too. His consolation was that he was still playing football, well. But he would leave no part of his life to chance. He completed a degree in international business at RMIT, sustaining himself with a series of holiday jobs; one was in a salami factory. Graduated, he secured at job as a contract administrator for IT logistic systems at the Department of Defence.
Last pre-season with the Bulldogs, he knew, was his last chance. He was 22, as old as Marcus when he played his last AFL game. He was as fit as Daniel Cross, the Bulldogs' benchmark. And tests showed that he was plenty quick. Yet he was passed over again. "After the third pre-season, I was pretty disappointed," he said. "It felt like a waste. I wasn't going to do another one."
But there was the rookie list. Necessarily, the budget-conscious Bulldogs looked for bargains. Willy came to the party, offering to pay $10,000 towards Picken's listing, then upping it to $20,000. A deal was done. Picken was given 12 months' leave-of-absence from the DoD, now expired. On rookie's money, if he he did not play a senior game, his earnings would halve. "I didn't think about the money, I just wanted to give it a fair dinkum crack," he said.
He had a chance, his first and last, his life's mission. He moved in with Marcus, now 29 and long retired. There was one surprising effect. "Marcus looks really fit," said Bill. "Perhaps some of Liam's fitness has rubbed off on him." It is not just his imagination. "I told him all my diet requirements, and we cook meals together," said Liam. "I think he used to get a lot of takeaway, but now he's eating a lot healthier. Stopped getting out on the piss!"
From day one, Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade urged Picken to play to his strengths, not fret about kicking. He discovered that Picken had pace, but previously had not used it. He saw in Picken a player the team lacked, able to tag quick midfielders. After acquitting himself well in the bushfire match pre-season, a vacancy arose for Picken in round two, on Harvey. It was scarcely the shallow end. "No good easing him in," said Eade. "At his age, it's make or break. But it was also a measure of our confidence in him."
A dedicated vigil, culminating in a timely tackle late in the game, was judged by teammates to be match-winning. Abashed, he led the team from the ground. In the stands, Bill and Julie were bursting with pride. "If he only had played one game, we would have been rapt," said Bill. "The recruiting officers all thought he couldn't play."
A full-time footballer at last, Picken thrived, as Gotch predicted. Eade said he had improved in all aspects at a rate rare for a rookie. He has not been out of the team since. Mostly, he has had run-with roles. He admits this can be draining. "You've just got to be on the ball. You can't be five to 10 off; they'll cut you to shreds," he said. "You've got to be mentally switched on. You've got to concentrate 100 per cent of the game."
But other dimensions of his game are beginning to show through: the last goal of the epic against Geelong, two more last week against Richmond. After the second, his face, usually blank like a mask, cracked a little; there was a grin, a shyly raised hand. Teammates kid him. Picken drives an old Statesman, but the standing gag is that next week, it will be an Audi, and a block of apartments, too. "How's media street?" asks Ben Hudson. "Signed up with Max Markson yet?" asks Brian Lake. These jibes, rough endearments, are a football club's ultimate mark of respect.
But as Picken was given nothing, he is taking nothing as a given, not next year, not next week, not even tomorrow. The night after the Geelong game was the Bulldogs' ball, a hair-down night for all. Curry was surprised to find that Picken wasn't drinking. "I got a corkie from Tommy Williams," he explained. "I didn't want to go out and drink and make it bleed. It's part of being an athlete. It's my job now."
Picken has his chance, but it was too hard-won, too precious, to leave anything else to chance now.
