For the best part of three quarters on Sunday, St Kilda took the game right up to a highly fancied Port Adelaide outfit, starting with a centre square dominance courtesy of emerging ruckman Tom Hickey.

Having been handed the No. 1 ruck position after an intriguing summer of battle at Linen House Centre, the 25-year-old produced the finest performance of his career on Adelaide Oval, thriving as the Saints’ sole ruckman.

Not only did Hickey accumulate career high numbers for hitouts (56) and disposals (20), he was clinical with his ruckwork, paving the way for a comprehensive clearance win (60-44) as well as being clean with his disposal and taking important marks at times.

After playing second fiddle behind Billy Longer and splitting his time inside 50 last year, Hickey relished the opportunity to go head-to-head against Matthew Lobbe and credited a comprehensive pre-season for his impressive start to 2016.

“It’s probably the first pre-season I’ve had where I’ve been fairly injury free since I had knee surgery a year and a half ago. So I really got to have a solid pre-season under my belt,” Hickey told saints.com.au following St Kilda’s first round loss to Port Adelaide on Sunday.

“I didn’t do much with the group pre-Christmas, but I got to do a lot of strength work and running. This is probably the best I’ve felt coming into a season injury wise."

A clean bill of health across the board has created a healthy competition for spots at Seaford, particularly in the ruck department where all four specialist ruckmen have gone to work on each other over the summer.

And it’s the added pressure of knowing someone is waiting in the wings to replace you that Hickey says is important for performance, with the club not possessing a blatant No. 1 option like most clubs do.

“Richo’s made it clear that there’s no clear No. 1 ruckman and I was fortunate to get the nod this week,” Hickey said.

“But Lewy Pierce, Jason Holmes and Billy Longer are all playing really good footy at the moment and breathing down each other’s necks, it’s really healthy for competition for spots.

“You know that as soon as you have one bad game you put your name up to get dropped.

“I think it’s healthy that we’ve got four healthy ruckman and four ruckman that could well potentially play AFL footy.”

Opposed to one of the strongest midfields in the competition, St Kilda’s engine room took it right up to the Power from the opening bounce, showing no signs of being intimated by the litany of All Australians dressed in teal.

 “We were told not to be spooked by them because we can back our own midfield,” Hickey said.

“We pride ourselves on pressure in there and being able to handle the heat and we did, we took it to them and beat them on the spread early. But like all good teams do they come back and we got tired and conservative and it cost us.”