Two-time Premiership Captain Mark Bickley has plenty of never-before-told stories, following a 13-year AFL career spanning across 272 games, and three years within the coaching ranks.

This year, Bicks will be lifting the lid on those stories with us, taking you inside the four walls at West Lakes, with an aim of giving an insight into football life.

Bickley was part of the side that beat Geelong by three points in Round 17, 2002, and he recalls a special moment post-game.

Travelling to the Cats’ home ground - what was then known as Kardinia Park - is still one of the toughest trips in footy.

This game had so much riding on it - with six rounds remaining in the season and heading into the clash we were sitting fourth and Geelong was in fifth spot on the ladder.

Playing the Cats always had added emotion for Gary Ayres - our coach at the time - after he had also been the Senior Coach at Geelong.

We needed to win to keep our top-four hopes alive, so the eventual, hard-fought three-point win meant so much to us.

The day itself wasn’t too great for me, personally, I suffered an injury early in the game, but I was happy the boys got the win.

Ayres was copping heaps of flak from the Geelong crowd the entire game, with the coaches’ box extremely close to the fans.

Then, when the siren sounded and we had won, our coach gave the ‘bird’ to all the Cats fans who had been getting stuck into him.

I obviously didn’t see him doing it, but it was caught on camera and all the players found out after the game.

We all thought it was great that he could have the last laugh that day.

The pure joy and relief of winning was felt by everyone, including John Reid, who was footy manager at the time.

On the bus on the way back to the airport post-game, John got the driver to stop at a bottle shop drive through and he grabbed us a couple of slabs of beer to celebrate the result.

That would never happen unless we were on a footy trip, but given our Round 18 game was eight days later, the coaches allowed it and they all had one with us.

Players, coaches and support staff really enjoyed the moment.

It was a great way for us to connect as a team and made for an enjoyable ride to the airport after what was such a hard-fought victory.

Mark Ricciuto, who was Captain at the time, really announced himself as one of the best in the competition in 2002 and in that game he booted a match-high five goals.

Tyson Edwards recorded 26 disposals, while Chris Ladhams (24), Matt Bode (22) and Andrew McLeod (22) were also solid.

Geelong’s team had some absolute stars on it as well, but they were young and inexperienced.

Gary Ablett Jr was 18 years old, Paul Chapman and Cory Enright were also in that Cats line-up and were 21, while Tom Harley was 24.

Despite my injury, it was still such an iconic game in our history.

Go Crows!