TSALIKIS PROUD OF UNCONVENTIONAL CAREER WITH FALCONS

ANTHONY Tsalikis has two matches left of a remarkable career that should see him end as West Perth's third most prolific goalkicker and it has been a remarkable journey considering he almost never played the game, and could have easily said it was all too hard due to work commitments.

Coming from a European background, Tsalikis grew up playing the round ball game and that's certainly the direction his father wanted him to continue to head in, but showing some good signs in junior football changed everything when he was a 16-year-old.

After his performances for Ocean Ridge, he was asked to come down to join the West Perth colts and has been with the club ever since.

Tsalikis is now a five-time West Perth leading goalkicker and likely will make it six in 2014 and has played 188 matches, represented Western Australia and kicked 332 goals to be equal third on the all-time list at the Falcons.

That is a remarkable list of achievements considering he has had to juggle demanding work commitments all the way through, but he has embraced the West Perth Football Club as much as any player in history and will always be remembered as a favourite son of the club.

He has announced that the 2014 season will be the last of his career and he couldn’t be more proud of everything he has achieved.

"I will look back and be proud of my achievements. I didn’t know that I was third or fourth on the all-time goalkicking list so that is a big accomplishment and something I'll take close to heart in terms of West Perth being more than 125 years old as a club so that's a good thing to have."

The combination of wanting to focus even more on work, having the option to do some travelling and his body suggesting time is up all led to Tsalikis making the decision that 2014 would be the final season of his career.

 

"It's a bit to do with work and also my body that I took into account. It was always the plan to retire at the end of this year," he said.

"It's been a long time at the club and there are a few things I want to do next year in terms of travelling with the girlfriend and things like that. Last year I got a job that was a bit more of a senior role so I will have to spend some more time with work, but also do some travelling and have some weekends off. I think it's just the time to retire."

Combining work commitments and football has previously led Tsalikis to think his WAFL career might come to an end sooner and he did take off 2008 to do some travelling, but he is proud to have battled through to become a life member of the club and achieve everything he has along the way.

Tsalikis is also thankful to the latitude at times afforded him by senior coaches Darren Harris, Todd Curley and Bill Monaghan.

"It has been tough to juggle it all. In 2005 when I graduated, the company told me that I was heading down to the mine site in Ravensthorpe for BHP and I pretty much told Darren Harris at the time that I couldn’t play anymore," Tsalikis said.

"But the club has been helpful and the couple of companies I've worked for since then have been good about me playing footy. There has always been a couple of West Perth fans that have helped me and they have allowed me to fly in and fly out.

"It was tough when I was down at Ravensthorpe because it was Monday to Friday working 12 hours a day, then getting on the plane on Friday night, playing Saturday and flying back on Sunday. It has been tough, but the club has been good about it and over the last couple of years.

"Bill has been really understanding with myself and Dan Hunt in particular to allow us to just rock up in time for footy and taking the odd day off now. But footy has been a release for me and I guess if I didn’t have that while working, then the stress of work might have got to me."

 

While it wasn’t a popular move with his father at the time, Tsalikis will forever be thankful that he gave football a chance after having played soccer his whole life. As a result, the West Perth Football Club will always have a huge place in his heart.

"I played soccer until I was 16 and only played a bit of school footy when I was Years 8, 9 and 10. One of the teachers at my school suggested that I should give footy a crack and then I played three or four games at Ocean Ridge, and then West Perth asked me to play colts," he said.

"It was a big step up and it took me a while to get used to the positions to play and that side of things. I didn’t know much about West Perth in general either, but now I'm a life member and it has been a great 10 years at the footy club. I've made a lot of good mates from that.

"My dad initially wasn’t too happy when I decided to play footy and he wanted to keep me playing soccer, and he was pretty angry at that time, but he has been my No. 1 supporter since and he's there every week, and thinks he can even coach the game now."

 

While Tsalikis has achieved so much in his career and has so much to look back on fondly, he perhaps will never get over the fact completely that a shoulder injury robbed him of the chance of playing in last year's premiership win.

Tsalikis was on the verge of a league debut in West Perth's last premiership year of 2003 and then been a tremendous part of the Falcons side ever since.

He would have loved nothing more than to share that premiership with the likes of Jason Salecic, Matt Guadagnin, Dan Hunt, Ray Bartholomew, Andrew Strijk, Luke Tedesco and Chris Keunen, but there's nothing that can be done about it now.

"It's probably the hardest thing I've had to deal with and the only regret that I have from my time at the club. In 2003, I was close to playing league footy and Harro would tell me that he would give me a call on the Friday depending on the AFL players so it was tough, but I wasn’t ready in 2003," he said.

 

"It has been a long time since then and we played in a lot of losing finals games so it's the hardest thing to have not been part of the premiership. Those two or three weeks after were the toughest of my life in terms of football and how to cope with it, but I had a lot of support through some ex-West Perth players like Corey Johnson who was even more unlucky than me in 2003.

"I also had the support of my girlfriend and family, but it was tough. Going out as a life member is great, but it would have been really special to go out as a life member and premiership player. I still know that I had a lot to do with the Falcons that year and I put a lot of effort in there, it's just one of those things that happen in footy and I hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else ever."

Coming off that premiership win last year, West Perth's 2014 season hasn’t gone to plan with finals now not a possibility but Tsalikis wants to help the Falcons finish off strongly on the road against Claremont and Perth to build some momentum looking towards 2015.

"We have had a pretty disappointing year in terms of our consistency so over the last couple of games it will be good to help some of the youngsters," Tsalikis said.

"We've got a pretty young side in at the moment with some injuries to young and mid-tier players like Kody Manning and Nick Rodda, but we've got six or seven really young guys who have played under 15 league games.

"I'll just try to help them out and finish off the season a little bit better than we've done for the rest of the season, and to get our game plan right and get the team ready for a big 2015. Hopefully they can go a lot better than we did this year."