Round #10 - The conversations we get to have
Celebrating Wallsy
Wallsy's journey reminds us that the game's greatest gift is the people whose paths we cross, and I am grateful, as are so many others, for the conversations we got to have.
Sport naturally creates hero and villain narratives, almost without trying, and no doubt, this is part of its appeal.
My childhood was rich with Richmond heroes, the club I fell in love with before I fell in love with anything else.
But Batman needs the Joker for the story to work.
The villain? You know the type. Love them if they're yours, but rile you when they wear the colours of any other team. As you read this, a player will be coming to mind.
For me, the love-struck Tiger, it was Carlton’s Robert Walls who wore the black hat to perfection.
The Carlton and Richmond rivalry defined that era, and he, the gifted but combative Centre Half Forward, whose very presence on the football field was enough to draw irrational responses from this ten-year-old kid.
All the great teams have at least one player like this, continually inventing new ways to get under the skin of the opposition players and their supporters. Walls epitomised this phenomenon and thrived in his role as Richmond’s nemesis and chief antagonist.
It must be said, that Richmond had a few who fit this mould, none more than Kevin Sheedy, ‘the back pocket plumber’, whose response to Wallsy seemed similar to mine, and in my child mind, somehow justified my irrationality.
This Sheedy-Walls rivalry transcended the boundary line for decades after, and continued when they faced off as soon-to-be Premiership coaches.
All this came to mind when I learned of Wallsy’s passing last week.
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Let me start by saying that Wallsy was a much bigger part of my life than I was in his.
As a former school teacher and then coach of four AFL Clubs, including a Premiership at Carlton, I am one of many who think of their relationship with Wallsy this way.
This is what teachers and coaches do.
The really good ones, of which Wallsy most certainly was, see possibilities in you that you have yet to see in yourself.
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When I was drawing Wallsy for this week's edition of 'Moment of the Match', my mind went back to a storied game from many years ago.
It was the 1972 Grand Final, and it was like opening up a repressed memory. I recall that day clearly - an eight-year-old Tiger cub rendered inconsolable as Wallsy, all gangly limbs and fierce intent, tore us apart with six goals on the biggest stage, contributing to the Blues kicking a record Grand Final score, which stands to this day.
The 1972 Football Record from that day sits in the background of my drawing, a nod to the 112,393 who witnessed his virtuoso performance. If Norm Smith Medals were to be presented in retrospect, something I would warmly endorse, there is a big chance ‘R. Walls’ would be engraved on the 1972 medal.
Richmond were warm favourites after beating Carlton two weeks earlier, yet here we were, being thoroughly dismantled.
I cried my way through that afternoon, wondering why my father, Alan Schwab, Secretary of the Tigers, couldn't somehow stop this unfolding disaster.
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As the years went by, and my passion for the game morphed into a career, I got to meet and know many of my childhood heroes and villains, and they didn’t match the figures I’d constructed.
My heroes proved to be human, including my father, with all the doubts, struggles and flaws. At the same time, my villains revealed dimensions and depths I never allowed them in my simplified kid narrative, and this became one of the first lessons the game taught me, the growing realisation that the game's characters exist beyond the roles I and others assign them.
While the football world, in which I was now ensconsed, would mostly continue to judge these people in binary ways, my experience of them was very different. Nuanced and way more interesting than the popular narratives built over the years.
Despite this understanding, when our paths eventually crossed, it did not stop me from being a tad disappointed to discover that Wallsy was, in fact, a wonderful person.
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I reached out to Wallsy over 20 years ago. We didn’t know each other well, but we had people in common who knew us both well enough to connect us with confidence.
It was a very challenging time for me. I was trying to resurrect my career after being sacked as Melbourne's CEO two years earlier, and I sought his counsel.
I was battling, feeling desperate, and doing my best not to appear so.
The Fremantle Football Club, just six years into its AFL life, was also going through a very challenging period, struggling on and off the field.
They would be looking for both a new Senior Coach and CEO in the next few months.
Some time later, Wallsy wrote an article in the Age newspaper about what he felt Fremantle needed to do. He pushed for the appointment of an experienced CEO as the next step, and mentioned me in the article. It was subtle, but it came with the credibility that he had earned over many decades in the game.
He didn't need to do this.
While I will never know if the article played a role, I was appointed CEO of Fremantle a few months later.
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What struck me most about Wallsy was how he made you feel about you.
There are people you meet, and you feel good about them, and Wallsy definitely fitted this category. Tall, thoughtful, but also very strong in his views, with just an edge of intimidation.
Then there are people you meet, and you feel good about you. The feel-good-about-you people do so without expectation of reciprocity; it was neither needed nor demanded of you. This was also Wallsy.
What he did for me all those years ago meant the world. At a time when I was lacking belief, he believed.
A few years later, we appointed his son, David, as a part-time recruiter. It was a small opportunity, which David has turned into a big role, and he is now one of the game's most respected List Managers.
Fremantle are slowly building something special, and David’s fingerprints are all over it.
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Wallsy and I connected across several dimensions.
We’d both had boxer dogs (he wrote a book about his boxer Gus), we shared an insatiable appetite for both the folklore and performance aspects of footy, and we love Daylesford, a beautiful town in the Macedon Ranges, both of us having homes in the area.
Just a few years ago, I ran into Wallsy, with my wife Cecily, walking his boxer, Lily, around Lake Daylesford, where we had recently moved. After chatting for a few minutes, he invited me to his place the next morning. I arrived with a stash of Anzac biscuits from the local bakery, telling my wife I'd be home in a couple of hours. By the time I returned, it was dark - we'd spent the entire day sharing stories about footy, leadership, and life.
More than anything, however, I think we connected over Ron Barassi, and the role he had played in shaping us when, through the circumstances of our respective lives, both as teenagers, he the talented footballer, me as a young administrator with a job description that might as well have read “do anything Ron Barassi asks you to do”, found ourselves buckling in for the full force of the Barassi experience.
It was Ron Barassi, then a young coach, who rang Wallsy’s parents seeking permission to play their skinny 16-year-old son at the highest level. Wallsy’s relationship with Barassi embodied that natural tension between gratitude and rebellion, which defines so many profound mentorships.
Wallsy once even expressed regret at not inviting Barassi to his 21st birthday, having "had a gutful of the man who demanded so much." But then in his reflections, Wallsy wrote of Barassi: "He was tough and uncompromising. But he was also the best coach a kid could ever wish to have - something I didn't appreciate until years later."
That tension between needing guidance while establishing your own identity seemed to have shaped Wallsy’s approach to leadership and mentorship, as someone who could both unlock potential and extract it.
It would be a long list of people who had a similar experience of Wallsy's generosity and wisdom.
It was a very special day, the significance of which has heightened this past week.
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There are many people in football who are only interested in ‘arrival’ - the premiership, the accolade, the moment of victory. There is a rarer breed, who I’d describe as the ‘growers’, who understand the journey itself is the point.
I sat in the lounge of Wallsy that day, a man in his 70s, a wonderful storyteller, more than happy to regale me with the other side of the oh-so-combustible Carlton-Richmond rivalry of which he often lit the match. Yet, his real energy for the game was driven by what it could be, not what it was, or what it currently is, be that his beloved Blues and their struggles, or his regular visits to the local Hepburn Football & Netball Club, the Mighty Burras.
Wallsy played, coached, and commented with a curiosity that embraced complexity rather than the certainty that demanded unsophistication. The game fascinated him not just for its outcomes but for its infinite possibilities. This was why his commentary carried such weight - it came from someone who saw the shades of grey where others saw only black and white, but that never limited him from having the strongest of opinions.
Wallsy's journey reminds us that the game's greatest gift is the people whose paths we cross, and I am grateful, as are so many others, for the conversations we got to have.
Vale Wallsy. You lived a big life.
Play on!
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