TOE TO TOE WITH THE LEGENDS
Off the Walls
Premiership player and coach – and now fearless commentator – Robert Walls always had a clear-eyed view of the game, but admits he has mellowed in approach.
RHYS: Every time the TV rights deal changes, there are reshuffles in the media. And I believe you are changing radio stations. What's on your agenda for next year?
WALLS: I'll be at SEN on radio doing Crunch Time from 11am to 1pm on Saturdays. It rates really well with Mark Robinson, Anthony Hudson and Dermott Brereton. I'll take Lloydy's spot on there. On the Sunday I will do the game on SEN with Andy Maher and Wayne Schwass. I think I'll also be doing an hour on Monday morning with Andy Maher and Tim Watson. And I'll be writing for The Age again. I'm happy to pull back from what it was 10 years ago when I was covering four games per weekend.
RHYS: It's a long season these days and you have big media commitments. What's your timetable during the off-season – improving the golf handicap?
WALLS: I play a lot of golf. Julie, my partner, has a beach house at Somers. We spend 90 per cent of our time down there from November through to the start of the footy season. It's only 70 minutes to travel down there. We get there as much as we can. I catch up with my kids and my three little granddaughters.
RHYS: We hear a lot of players trot out the line about wanting to get into the media when they have finished playing, but there are only so many positions and there's a big turnover. You have had a long media career. What is the secret?
WALLS: It's been 15 years. You have to put in the hours and do the preparation. I was a player for 15 years and I was a coach for 16 years. In that 31 years I was involved with very successful teams that played in Grand Finals and won premierships. I was also involved in teams that won wooden spoons. I was captain, I was sacked as a coach a couple of times, I coached three clubs in Melbourne and went up north to Brisbane. I guess, looking back, there aren't too many things that I missed out on, good or bad. Whatever happens I can think, gee, I've been there. I've seen it from every angle and that made me confident I could comment because I had been in those situations.
RHYS: You call it as you see it, much like Mark Maclure, even if it's going to upset people.
WALLS: As soon as you give strong opinion you are going to upset 50 per cent of the audience. You just hope that you call it as you see it and don't play favourites. If you are consistent in that you earn respect for what you do. I never set out to be popular but I set out hopefully that people would respect that what I wrote was what I felt.
RHYS: You started very young as a player for Carlton. These days a 16-year-old couldn't play AFL footy. How would you have felt if you were told at that stage you had to wait another two years?
WALLS: I went down to Carlton when I was 15 and started with the thirds; Doully (Bruce Doull) and I used to catch the tram together. I'm a few months older than Bruce and we've known each other since we were kids. I got promotion up to the seconds, which meant training with the firsts. It was unbelievable for a school kid to go there and train with people like Ron Barassi, John Nicholls and Sergio Silvagni. There had been players who played seniors at 16, and when I was playing in the reserves at 15 I thought it would be terrific to play at 16; that was a little goal that I had. It happened in 1967, the same day that Peter Hudson made his debut for Hawthorn. Hudson was at one end and I was at the other. They flew Hudson over in a plane and I got the tram down Sydney Road … and had to play my own fare!
RHYS: The unusual thing with you is that most kids who started really early at 15 or 16 were flankers or midfielders, not key position players. That would have made it even harder.
WALLS: I did start at full forward and I wasn't physically strong enough to hold that position. I got dropped after a few games. They then played me at full back in the reserves, and the next chance I got to play in the seniors was as a tall back pocket. In those days you would mind the resting ruckman. That was my role in 1968 when we won the premiership. The instructions were pretty simple: if you can't mark it, punch it. If you got it you could kick the ball out on the full and it didn't matter. It was a good role because I was playing on blokes like Carl Ditterich, Mike Patterson, John Sudholz and Barry Goodingham. These guys were giants, and I felt if I could get a fist on the ball I could beat them at ground level. On the backline we had Wes Lofts at full back, Collo (Ian Collins) in the pocket and on the half-back line there was Ragsy Goold and Barry Gill. They were all older than me and they were really good to me … I might have learned a few dirty habits from Loftsy.
RHYS: I believe your coach Ron Barassi named you on the bench for your first game to divert attention, but told you that you would be starting at full forward. You had never played full forward before.
WALLS: In the seconds it was full back and before that a handful of games in the thirds as a half-forward flanker or half-back flanker. I was just a skinny kid. You are right, Barassi came to my house on the Wednesday night before the opening game and asked my mother if I was allowed to play. Dad was in hospital after a heart attack and there was a lot of tension at the time. Barassi asked my mum if I could play and she said yes. Being at full forward was all pretty new to me. As a junior with Coburg Amateurs in the under-15s, I played at centre half back. My first three games I played at full forward. Dad died about a month after that and he never saw me play but he knew that I had made League footy. I was really pleased that he actually knew that.
RHYS: You had some wise and tough old heads around you. Did that make a difference? You were dropped for a while in that first season but got back when Lofts was suspended and played full back.
WALLS: It was fantastic. John Nicholls made you feel like you were six inches taller. Just to know the big bloke was around you, he was pretty ruthless and I saw him do lots of things. He was tough, he was hard and you knew if anyone knocked you around he would square up with them quick smart. That made you feel more confident knowing you had that protection. Barassi as coach was tough and revered. Serge is a good friend of mine now but for the first few season at Carlton he hardly spoke to me – you had to earn your stripes. You had really good players around – Brent Crosswell was a fantastic player. Quirk and Crane on the wings, Ian Robertson was there, so was Swan McKay. Keogh was a fantastic player and so was Ashman. I got to Carlton at a time when they just started to take off. They hadn't won a premiership in 21 years. I played in five grand finals in six years. Names like Jesaulenko, Southby and Doull still hold up today as champions.
RHYS: Ron Barassi once described you as a coach's dream. I believe you copped some stirring from teammates after that about being the coach's pet.
WALLS: He wrote a column for The Sun and wrote his column around me one time, which was terrific. The thing I copped most from was that I had given my sister my match payment because I thought I played so badly in one game. The word got out.
RHYS: You played in your first premiership at 18 in your 28th game. I believe you were meant to be changing with Silvagni on the ball.
WALLS: I played on Teddy Fordham and Loftsy was at full back on a kid called Geoff Blethyn. Blethyn and I had played on each other as juniors in the Coburg district. I used to be an Essendon supporter as a kid and barracked for all those blokes. The plan was for Serge and me to play ruck rover switching into the back pocket. He made the first call to change about three minutes before three-quarter time. We had the three-quarter time break and after the huddle broke up, I've gone to the middle and he's grabbed me by the shoulder and told me to get back to the back pocket, and that was it! It was a really windy, swirly day. We kicked seven goals and they kicked eight, but we kicked a lot of points and won it. I remember going back to the social club and the supporters were just crying with delight, and it was terrific to be there.
RHYS: You left Carlton in mid 1978 after falling out with the coach Ian Stewart. But he was gone by the time you left. You hadn't been happy with other things at Carlton in your last couple of years. What were they?
WALLS: When Nick gave it away as a player, I'd been vice captain to Nick for three or four years, so I assumed I would be captain. They made Jessa captain so I was disappointed. The next two years I played pretty well and then they made me captain. Looking back they didn't do it well because I was not told I was going to be captain and Jessa wasn't told he wasn't going to be captain – it was announced in the papers. We got up and read that I was going to be captain and he wasn't. For the next year and a half that I was captain it was a situation where some of the players thought I should have been captain and some thought Jessa should. There wasn't the harmony you should have had. Stewart came as coach and I fell out with him pretty well after the first game of the season in 1978. We got beaten by Richmond and he told me I didn't try. On the Monday night after the first game he pulled me across and said I didn't try, he didn't want me as captain, and didn't want me in the team. He just didn't want me. I regret I didn't belt him – I honestly do. Because obviously I did try and I didn't deserve to have that said to me. I probably played another three or four games. I was put in the backline and told not to go to match committee, which I had been doing. In those days you could go to another club mid-season. I can remember driving into Carlton on a Tuesday night and I had made my mind up that I was going. I just walked in, left my bag in the car, and said to Jack Wrout, the chairman of selectors and a terrific old bloke, very well respected: "I know the coach doesn't want me. There's no point in me staying here and I'm going to walk out the door." Poor old Jack had tears in his eyes. I drove home and thought well, that's a sad way to finish but you can't always pick the perfect ending. I was 27 or 28 and thought I had a couple of years left. Fitzroy contacted me. They had just got Bernie Quinlan. Their coach was Graeme Campbell and he came out to my home and said they had a team of kids and they would love me to come there. I played two and a half years at Fitzroy. In the last year, 1980, Fitzroy won the wooden spoon and I got dropped from the team so that tells you how well I was going! At the same time I don't regret going to Fitzroy because I saw football from another point of view, basically I went from the richest club to the poorest club. It was a good education and that gave me the chance to coach. I stepped straight into coaching and had I not gone there as a player, that wouldn't have happened. Because I had been there two and a half years they knew me and I knew them. Once I got to Fitzroy I realised how good Carlton was, how effective Barassi and Nicholls had been as coaches. So I saw it from the other side of the fence.
RHYS: Carlton charged $70,000 for your transfer and later on you recalled that was a bit rich as you started out paying your tram fare to training.
WALLS: That's right, they had a massive win, didn't they! They gave me bugger all and then got $70,000.
RHYS: You moved straight from playing at Fitzroy into coaching the club and everyone saw it as a logical progression. Were you thinking about getting into coaching even before you left Carlton?
WALLS: Yes I was, absolutely. I did that one summer under Ian Stewart and I thought his training ideas were fantastic. I'd get home and I had a notebook where I would write down all the drills. I had also written down the training ideas of Barassi and Nicholls, so probably from the age of 24 I started to think about it. At 24 I was offered the coaching job at Latrobe in Tasmania.
RHYS: You had a lot of success at Fitzroy and the situation there would have been vastly different to Carlton. You also had some great players coming through like Gary Pert and Paul Roos.
WALLS: I had five years there and the first four years I loved it and was as keen as mustard. All I wanted to do was be successful with that young group and establish myself as a coach. I was teaching at the same time and worked really hard. I'd drive down some mornings when I'd leave home at 5.30 from Park Orchards and we'd start training at 6.30 and knock off at 8am, drive back out to Park Orchards and teach til 3.30 then drive back in for a late afternoon training session and drive home again at 8pm. The senior blokes that I had played with – Quinlan, Wilson and Bernie Harris – were good guys and I had their support. When I was appointed coach at the end of 1980, I went and watched Fitzroy thirds play in the finals. I'd never seen any of those kids play. I put a tick next to about 10 names and I thought I'd get them to summer training with the senior group. Three of them were a young Roos, Pert and Michael Osborne so how lucky could you be. We put them in the team straight away and recruited Scotty Clayton from Tasmania, Matt Rendell from South Australia. They were a very close group and wanted to play for each other. Ronnie Alexander was another one of the old guys who was terrific in my first year. We had half a dozen old blokes and these kids coming through. Because it was a very small team we concentrated on handball and possession. With Bernie Quinlan he won the Brownlow in that first year I coached and we basically had a set format. He would play as a ruck rover for the first 10 minutes of every quarter – you are talking about a bloke who was six foot four inches tall. He would just monster the rovers and ruck rovers he was on and then he would drift into the forward line. At that stage the opposition tall defenders had already taken our two main forwards so Bernie would get the third tall defender. He had a ripper year – won the Brownlow and kicked a heap of goals. Garry Wilson was a star and people didn't realise how good he was. Had Garry Wilson played for Carlton or Richmond in the 1970s or 1980s in the finals he would have been regarded as an absolute star.
RHYS: You must have enjoyed that.
WALLS: It was an exciting time. It was a final five back then and we beat Essendon in an elimination final. In the time I was there we played in the finals three out of five years. It was a good buzz around the place, but unfortunately they didn't have much money. In my first year as coach I got paid 20 grand. I would have done it for nothing as I was just happy to get a crack at it. In those days you could sell players mid season and I don't know how many times I would get called in by the secretary or president and they'd say we haven't got enough money, we've got to sell Mick Conlan or Les Parish or someone else. It was just hard work and after my fourth year I had a chance to go back to Carlton, but I stayed at Fitzroy for the fifth year. It was a real struggle knowing that Carlton had recruited blokes like yourself, Kernahan, Bradley, Motley and Dorotich. I thought it would be nice coaching at a club where all you had to do was worrying about coaching and not the financial side of it.
RHYS: I remember playing against Fitzroy and their fitness levels were greater than others. They were above other clubs in the weights era, too.
WALLS: It was probably led by Conlan and Parish and Leon Harris, but Chris Jones was the one who should take credit for that. He came from overseas and there was a big emphasis on weight training. I think that the brand of football we played, with lots of possessions and tackling hard, we needed that. Blokes like Conlan and Parish set the benchmark. So did Chris Smith. In the gym they had a board which showed who had the best bench press and so on. It was a case of walking into the club and seeing the standards that were set.
RHYS: I can remember getting to training at Carlton and Chris Jones grabbed me and said he needed to talk to me. He said he had pedalled down on his bike and he didn't know how many times he had thought of me and wanted to get me and punch me right between the eyes!
WALLS: He might have thought you needed a few more weight sessions!
RHYS: You returned to Carlton in 1986 and won a flag in the second year. How does the premiership experience compare as a player and a coach.
WALLS: As a player it is exciting and the best, and there's nothing like being out there. You've been through it. It's a massive thrill that you share with teammates and supporters. As a coach I felt you carried an enormous responsibility and I felt that if you win it is a feeling of satisfaction and relief because you carry the hopes of so many people. Other than talk and encourage and demand, you can't be out there trying to win the footy. Playing is the best by a long, long way, but the satisfaction of coaching a premiership team lasts forever. I look back at blokes like Shane Robertson, Michael Kennedy and Richard Dennis – they are really important to me because they aren't the stars of the team but they played important roles. Players like Kernahan, Bradley, yourself, Tommy Alvin, Silvagni and Deanie – you never forget them. You think they are your boys and you did it and it can't ever be taken away.
RHYS: You lost the Carlton coaching job in 1989. Were there more politics at play at Carlton than there had been at Fitzroy? Did you not deal as well with officials as you might have? Allan Jeans once said that a coach had to deal with players, committees, media and supporters and keep them all onside.
WALLS: Look, there is no doubt that at the four clubs I coached at, I made none or very little effort to befriend board members, people who had a fair say or strong input, probably to my detriment. I wasn't prepared to pee in anyone's pocket. Take me as I am and if you don't like it, move me on. I've got no doubt other coaches played the political game better than I did. Do I regret it? No, I could only be true to myself and I felt I was. Was I pig-headed? Probably I was. Could I have listened to more people? Probably yes. Most of my coaching was in my 30s. I finished coaching at the age of 46 and there are people starting as coaches now at 43 and they are called young coaches. No doubt my stubbornness and pig-headedness upset people.
RHYS: Your record at Carlton was very good. I was there at the time and people outside were asking me whether I was involved in getting rid of Wallsy and I just said I had no idea and had nothing to do with any of it. Were there other players causing friction, because people outside had that impression? I remember John Elliott saying it but I'm thinking, hang on, they haven't asked everyone.
WALLS: I only had one player, and I won't name him, who came up to me and said "We think you are really selfish." It really shocked me because as a coach I was always trying to put the players first. I never had players say they were unhappy with the training or that I was pushing them too hard. They may have thought it but no-one said anything. In those days the coach was expected to make all the decisions and you didn't have that great number of assistants like now. Serge Silvagni was out on the ground with me and knew as well as anyone and he'd say "For Christ's sake, let them know you have got a sense of humour. Have a laugh and a joke rather than being this stern-faced hard taskmaster." I was probably looking for fault more than where to give praise. After a short period of time that wears thin. Did I deserve to get the sack? Well we had been second, first, third and then I got the sack. I do think it wasn't much fun for me or the players in that fourth year. I look back and think it was a bit sad the way it ended. I was angry at the Carlton footy club for a couple of years. When you get sacked it's a very public and humiliating thing. I had a year out of footy and then I went up to Brisbane. It gave me about 18 months to reflect and during that 18 months I made up my mind that I was never going to let the game get on top of me again and get as insular and demanding and bloody nasty as I could be. The chance to coach Brisbane was good for me because I went up there relaxed and open. I knew it would be a hard job but as a family it was something we would enjoy. As time went by, that anger towards Carlton subsided and I'm glad it did. Carlton was terrific to me and they still invite me to things. I suppose, over the journey, 90 per cent of my time there was good.
RHYS: And you coached at Richmond. The Tigers are notorious for turning on their coaches. Were they any worse than other club?
WALLS: I should never have coached at Richmond. When I left Brisbane there were reasons I left and came back to Melbourne. My son had been drafted by Carlton and also Erin's mother and my own mother were not well. They were getting quite elderly. I'd taken a job with The Age to be a full-time football writer. When I left Brisbane they chased John Northey. He had a year to go on his contract at Richmond and left. Richmond knew I was coming back to Victoria and they approached me. It's nice to be asked. I agreed to a three-year contract and lasted a year and a half. I met some good people, like Wayne Campbell, Matthew Knights, Tony Free and Richo. So I don't regret that, but I probably shouldn't have coached because I was just about worn out at that time. I was only about 46 or 47 but I had no desire to coach again after that.
RHYS: You copped flak over the Shane Strempel confrontation at Brisbane when it was part of a documentary in later years. How do you reflect on that now?
WALLS: The best that I can say about that is that it was done at a training session and I went home at night and never thought twice about it. It wasn't any big deal. This was a bloke that had mucked up repeatedly and his teammates were sick of him. He had no respect from anyone and I just thought we had tried so many ways, let's put him in the boxing ring and he could earn a bit of respect for himself. The bottom line is that if I wanted to kill the bloke I could have put him in tackling drills and had blokes running through him for half an hour. When that documentary came out I was given a warning by a mate of mine that it would paint me in a not very good light. The documentary was done in a very sinister way. I was pretty disappointed in how it was portrayed. Quite a few Brisbane players who saw it rang me and reckoned that I'd been stiffed.
RHYS: How different were you as a coach by the time you finished? Were there habits or approaches that you abandoned?
WALLS: Absolutely. When I started, it was life and death and it consumed me. There was not much time for anything else. I remember with my wife Erin when I'd walk into a ground or away from a ground people would say g'day or ask me for an autograph and I would just keep walking. She would say, "Jeez, you were rude." But I was focused on the game or a player I wanted to talk to. I've got no doubt when I left Carlton as coach I had 18 months out of the game and it just got my priorities right – your family, friends and health. There's wars overseas and poverty and you just thought footy was important, but it's not life and death. When I went to Brisbane I was determined to be more relaxed and let the players get to know me a bit more. They were a very young group, we fielded some of the youngest teams ever to play League footy. We'd have 12 or 13 players who were 20 or younger. Apart from teaching them as a coach most of them were a long way from home. I spent a lot of time at barbecues, on the golf course and at the races during summer. Young guys like Leppitsch, Akermanis, Lappin, Chapman, Scott – you went out of your way to spend time with the kids. Wayne Brittain was really good as my assistant coach.
RHYS: After that you must have had enormous pleasure seeing those young guys being triple premiership players.
WALLS: I can still remember a young Nigel Lapin walking in, a kid from country Victoria, as shy as a mouse. Akermanis – while he was talkative there was an insecurity that he was trying to hide, he made out he knew everything, had been everywhere, but deep down you knew he was pretty fragile. Ashcroft was a great example. He played over 300 games, but in the first 100 he played in probably 30 winning teams. By the last 100 it was probably 70 winning and 30 losing teams. Now we see Lappin as an assistant coach at Geelong, Leppitsch at Richmond, McRae at Collingwood, Vossy and Chris Scott are senior coaches.
RHYS: Coaching is a precarious business and AFL coaches are always under the spotlight. Does it surprise you how many blokes are keen to take it on despite the short lifespan?
WALLS: No it doesn't. Most blokes by the end of their careers reckon they know a few things that could be tried and they'd like a crack at it. Ninety per cent get sacked but that's part of the deal. It's become a real career opportunity. Now there's seven at each club and you've got the under-18s as well.
RHYS: What's the next big trend in coaching structures? Will it be the Bomber Thompson mentor role?
WALLS: I think so and I reckon it's really important. Going back to my own coaching days it would have been terrific to have an old bloke who had been through the mill who watched each training session, saw you making mistakes and told you. I made mistakes, particularly at Carlton, and there was no-one who pulled me aside and said "you need to give this bloke an opportunity" or "you are riding this bloke too hard". You were expected to know it all. For Mark Neeld to have Neil Craig alongside him, how good is that going to be?
RHYS: At the other end of the scale we are seeing such positions as stoppage strategy coach.
WALLS: The problem in the AFL is that as soon as one club sets up a certain position, they all follow. I know the AFL is worried about the explosion in expenditure on off-field people.
RHYS: I was with an old teammate of yours, Jessa, on Brownlow Medal night and he said he wanted players to go back to their positions. But I reckon footy is fantastic. What about you?
WALLS: I marvel at the fitness, courage and athleticism of the players. They are drilled more than ever before in knowing where to go and what to do. I think the game is in good shape.
