[2] As an administrator, Hickey was a fierce Australian nationalist and spared no expense in his attempt to nationalise the sport and grow the VFL's audience in New South Wales and Queensland, though continually struggled with the idea that people in these states did not appreciate the concept of "national football".

[7] In 1897, when Fitzroy and seven other clubs seceded from the VFA to form the Victorian Football League, Hickey served as the inaugural treasurer of the new body, and later as chairman of the permit and umpire committee and vice-president,[4] and was a VFL administrator continuously until 1933.

In that capacity, he was heavily involved in the ANFC's efforts to promote football nationally, which included establishing the interstate carnival,[3] scheduling numerous VFL exhibition matches in Sydney and Brisbane, and taking on a heavy administrative workload to arrange all carnivals which took place during his life.

[12] Early into his term as football chief he oversaw a diversion of promotional budgets for international game development domestically to New South Wales (and to a lesser extent Queensland) and moved to exclude fledgling nations including South Africa (1906),[13] United States (1909),[14][15] New Zealand (1910),[16][17] Japan (1910)[18] and Canada (1912)[19] from membership in the council, choosing instead to promote to them the concept of universal football, which never took off.

[23] His position on international football appeared to change following World War I which had a significant impact on the code's supremacy in Australia.

Speaking in 1929 on the status of the code internationally, Hickey noted that the visiting All Blacks showed an appreciation of the marking and kicking in Australian rules, and pointed to Gaelic Football's rapid growth in the United States as an example of how Australian Football could one day still carve a niche overseas, though reiterated that the Council still had no plans to promote it outside of Australia.