Vickerman was born in South Africa and played his early rugby in South Africa. He attended Bishops College in Cape Town and played for their First XV. When he was 17 he spent a year in England playing for Cheltenham Colts where he would play with, amongst others, Peter Buxton who himself went on to have a successful professional career, most notably with Premiership club Gloucester. Vickerman and Buxton took a year out together to visit and play rugby in Australia. This started Vickerman on the path to representing Australia, first at Under 21 level. After representing South Africa at Under-21 level in 1999, Vickerman arrived in Australia the following year and played for Australia at the 2000 SANZAR-UAR Under-21 tournament.
Rugby career
In 2001, Vickerman was contracted by the Brumbies and made his debut that season in a Super 12 match against the Sharks in Durban. He played a total of seven Super 12 games that season. In 2002, he was selected to play for Australia A in Canada that year. He went on to make his test debut that year in Sydney in a match against France. Vickerman became a regular for the Wallabies in 2003, either as a starter or off the bench. He signed with the Waratahs for the 2004 season. Vickerman was a replacement in all the domestic Wallaby tests in 2004, but became the starting lock on the end of year tour to the United Kingdom and France. In 2006 he started in all but one match for the Waratahs who made it to the finals of the 2006 Super 14 season. He was subsequently named in John Connolly's Wallaby squad. Later that season he injured his shoulder and underwent reconstruction surgery in November 2006. Although missing most of the 2007 Super 14 season through injury recovery, Vickerman returned to the Test scene in a test match against Wales coming off the bench, and cemented his place back in the Wallaby starting line up for the Wallabies 2007 Rugby World Cup squad. Vickerman raised his 50th Test cap against Wales during the 2007 World Cup, but managed just three appearances during the 2008 international because of another shoulder injury he sustained in the 2008 Super 14 final. In the autumn of 2008 Vickerman left Australia for England to study at Cambridge University, where he read Land Economy for three years. He played for Cambridge in the 2008 Varsity Match. The following year, he combined his studies with a renewed professional career at Northampton Saints. He signed a one-year deal in May 2009 to play with Northampton in the Guinness Premiership for the 2009–10 season, but arranged to delay his arrival with the team until after the 2009 Varsity Match in December, in which he captained Cambridge to a 31–27 victory over eternal rival Oxford. His first match for the Saints was against Sale Sharks on 7 March 2010. Vickerman returned to Australia in 2011 to play again for the Waratahs and press his claims for national selection. He was chosen in the Wallabies team which won the 2011 Tri Nations Series and claimed third place at the 2011 Rugby World Cup. A persistent injury problem with stress fractures in the tibia of his right leg forced his retirement from the game in 2012. He worked for the Rugby Union Players' Association after his retirement.
Death
Vickerman died on the night of 18 February 2017 at his Sydney home, at the age of 37. The cause of death was confirmed as suicide. He was survived by his wife and two young children.
