Ricky Nixon

Recruited from Golden Square in the Bendigo Football League, Nixon played four games for the Carlton Football Club between 1983 and 1985, for one goal, amid limited opportunities (he was an emergency 13 times in their 1982 premiership year). The half-back flanker then moved to St Kilda—where he played 51 games, including one final—and scored 32 goals between 1986 and 1991, but Nixon was never really able to establish himself with the club. A contractual dispute with the Saints in March 1992 saw him move to the Hawthorn Football Club, where he played eight games, including one final for six goals, before his retirement in 1993.

Possibly the most high-profile sports agent in Australia, Nixon established his sports management company, Flying Start, in 1994 after eight years of teaching physical education at Carey Grammar. The company grew considerably to become one of the leading sports management companies in Australia. Nixon was a pioneer of group marketing of prominent athletes in Australia with his Club 10 team of AFL players, which included Gary Ablett Sr., Wayne Carey, Jason Dunstall, Tony Lockett and Garry Lyon.

He is widely acknowledged as a major leader in the innovative marketing of athletes and has been rated by The Age newspaper as the fourth-most-influential person of the past decade in the AFL. In 2000, Nixon rorted the salary cup to secure his client Wayne Carey an additional $400,000 in salary. According to Nixon, when the AFL complained about this manoeuvre, he simply told them "I run the competition, not you."

Flying Start's players included Matthew Richardson, Ben Cousins, Nick Riewoldt and Tom Hawkins. Nixon started a fitness club at Docklands Stadium, where he also co-owned the Locker Room Bar and Cougars Sports Bar with Michael Gudinski. He also commentated AFL on radio station Triple M and has been awarded the Australia Day Sports Medal for services to sport by the prime minister. He has since entered the education business with Flying Start providing online courses, including "How to be a Sports Agent".

In 2008, Nixon began a well-publicised campaign to escalate the Irish experiment and set up a formal system for recruiting promising young Irish Gaelic footballers for AFL teams. The plan was criticised by many Gaelic football officials and players, including Sydney's Tadhg Kennelly. Some consider that the campaign, which included screening camps in Ireland in August 2008, will result in a talent drain from Ireland to Australia, something that Nixon refutes.

In 2014, Nixon relaunched Flying Start International as a sports agency and consultancy, having retained the rights to the brand. He also stated that he did not intend to regain accreditation. In 2015, Nixon was arrested for allegedly threatening to assault a two-year-old child on Facebook.

In January 2019, Nixon, along with his son's Lewis and Mitchell, started a charity known as Kicking for Cancer. It holds a charity football match every year to raise money to go towards kids with cancer.

In July, he started a new business, Vital Health Checks. The business goes around in ex-Ambulances and gives people health checks on location.