The rise and cries of Jarrod Walsh
FANBOY Jarrod Walsh’s love of all things sport shines through as host, emcee and game-day voice at big sporting events like the Showdown between Port Adelaide and the Crows.
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JARROD Walsh has a simple message for anyone who’s sick of the sight of his face and the sound of his voice.
“If you’re an Adelaide sports fan and you hate me then you’re going to be disappointed — because I’m at every sporting event,” Walsh says with a grin as wide as the brim on his Chance The Rapper baseball cap.
And that’s not much of an exaggeration.
The 34-year-old who admits he’s terrible at every sport except hockey is the game day voice, emcee, host, and front-row cheerleader for Port Adelaide Power, Adelaide United, Adelaide 36ers, Adelaide Strikers, Adelaide Thunderbirds, and has recently taken on the Boomers and Socceroos’ international games, the USA v Canada ice hockey series, and even Blitz Golf and SANFL fast footy.
By day Walsh is a university-educated radio host and operations manager but by night is wholeheartedly and unashamedly a giant fanboy. So much so, he once went to the US and got an NBA media pass so he could enter the rooms post-match. Despite being told he could not have a photo with LeBron James, Walsh still walked up and introduced himself just so his idol “would know I exist”.
Walsh says it’s that fanatical and emotional attachment that enables him to do his job. “I need to be connected to the players and the fans; if I’m not, it’s not authentic or genuine at all,” he says. “And if I’m not invested in the team and the league, then I shouldn’t be working there. When I’m hosting these events, I am a fan with a microphone and I always go by that mantra because I never want to be perceived as any better than anyone else, because I’m not.
“I’m just the lucky person who is one of those fans and who has the microphone. If anyone says something nice to me on social media I get back to them, or says hello at a sporting event I go and say hello back, so they know that I’m representing them.”
For three hours tonight, Walsh’s job is to scream into a microphone and whip nearly 50,000 people at the Showdown at Adelaide Oval into a frenzy before leaving with his voice so hoarse and mind so buzzing that he will struggle to sleep.
Yet strangely, his favourite part of the day is the calm before the storm. “Before every event I host, I always get there early and walk into the middle of the stadium and look around,” he says. “And the silence is crazy.
“With this job I have days when I’m flat and if I’m tired it’s hard, but generally I’m excited about the team playing. Pre-game is the most intense part but once the game starts you take a deep breath and you’re focusing on the next time-out or whatever, so I’ll generally go home and watch a replay to see what happened in the game.
“There is definitely a moment when I get home where I have to literally sit there and take a breath because it takes me about two hours to wind down and relax.”
As much as he rides the highs of victory, Walsh also experiences the lows of defeat but has to stay positive regardless.
“We make a decision pre-game whether we’ll speak to a player after a loss and normally we don’t,” he says. “But we’re doing a good job if the fans walk away having enjoyed the show. I might be shattered at the loss but we want them coming back.”
If you don’t see Walsh at a live sporting event in Adelaide then the chances are you will hear him on air with Nova. He was one of the first people the radio station hired when it started in Adelaide in 2002 and is now its afternoon host, but what many don’t realise is he’s also the operations manager.
Radio and sport is in his DNA. The son of legendary ABC broadcaster Peter Walsh, he was born in Ballarat and grew up in Tasmania following his father to Bellerive Oval where he was on a first-name basis with Test cricketers.
He moved to Adelaide when he was 15 and was doing stats and boundary reporting for $50 a game for the ABC at Football Park and the Adelaide 36ers in 2002 — the year of the club’s last NBL championship.
It was then that he was approached by sports director Cam Thompson about doing some promotional work for start-up station Nova. After handing out jelly beans and flyers while studying arts and media at the University of Adelaide, he was hired.
But early into his radio career, it nearly ended on the spot when he forgot to put the antenna down on the work van and drove off from the West Beach Surf Life Saving Club, bringing the powerlines down with him.
“Police came, freelance videographers were there, and they said ‘you’re lucky to be alive because there were live wires on the ground’,” Walsh recalls.
“It cost the company $150,000 and I was more worried about my job, but the next day they said ‘your job’s fine, but we can’t have you driving the cars, do you want to have a go on the air?’ That’s how it happened.”
Mindful of forging his own path and not being known as “Peter Walsh’s son”, he never intended to be on the airwaves.
“Dad is an amazing sports broadcaster and has a fantastic reputation but I didn’t want to be known as Peter Walsh’s son, I wanted to be known as myself,” he says.
But he had an obvious knack for it and since then has hosted every timeslot on the station including a 12-month stint in Melbourne where he chaired the national drive show with Akmal Saleh, Ed Kavalee and Cal Wilson in 2008. He planned to stay in Melbourne, and he and fiancee Gabrielle had already booked their wedding venue, before getting the call to say Nova was moving him back to Adelaide.
In hindsight he now says that was the best thing that could have happened to him.
Walsh dabbled in sports radio with a new show called Team Fitzy, which he hosted with Ryan Fitzgerald, Warren Tredrea and Andrew McLeod, and ventured into emceeing at pubs and nightclubs like the Highlander, the Alma and Stamford Grand.
“Really easy audiences,” he says. “But there were some nights I’d be standing next to the DJ and there would be five people there and you’d go, ‘What are we doing?’ But growing up I’ve always felt comfortable in front of the camera filming little videos for fun so it’s always been pretty normal.”
That’s also where he learnt to “wing it” and engage a big crowd by just being himself.
“I guess that’s where my radio background helps, I just try to be relatable to people so they know I am one of those supporters,” he said.
“And I don’t take myself too seriously. I’m happy to look the fool if things go wrong like when people walk straight past the camera when I’m talking or when the wrong information is up on the screen.”
His first on-field or on-court emcee sporting gig was with the 36ers and United in 2011-12, and in 2013 he declined Port Adelaide’s first invitation to be their AFL game-day host because he felt the timing wasn’t quite right. But when the Adelaide Oval redevelopment was completed in 2014, Walsh spoke to the Power again and this time he couldn’t say no.
“The very first Showdown at Adelaide Oval, when that Rudimental song Not Giving In played, I stood and just looked thinking ‘this is absolutely incredible’,” says Walsh, who lives at Peterhead in Port Adelaide heartland and 300m from his mum who he describes as his best friend.
“Port suits me as a brand because they’re young, they’re trying stuff and they’ve always backed me in.”
Since then, one thing has led to another, and Walsh is now basically fully booked but makes every effort to ensure he knows every team and club intimately, and provides a unique game-day experience for the fans.
“Any opportunity I’m grateful for, and the Adelaide Thunderbirds are the most recent example,” said Walsh who has started emceeing their games this season.
“A month before the season I went to training so I could meet the team because they are providing me with an opportunity and they are saying they trust me to represent their team and their brand.
“If I’m hosting in front of 50,000 people at Adelaide Oval or an event with 100 people I will put the same effort in because they’re giving me an opportunity. I would probably get more nervous in front of the 100 people.
“I can remember every single person who gave me an opportunity at the different brands because they gave me the chance to do what I love.
“I’ll always feel like I owe them one for taking a risk on me, believing and trusting in me. But I’m the end product of a lot of hard work and dedication by the game-day teams.
“I’m just the guy with the microphone but without the team around me, I wouldn’t be anything.”
Walsh is a sports fanatic — and, more specifically, a sports apparel fanatic — who has 32 LeBron James jerseys at home and for which he had a wardrobe custom made to keep them together. He also watches a lot of sport. A-League soccer is his passion and Australian rules football is in his blood but he admits he’s no good at either of them, so instead plays hockey for a release on weekends.
“I’m a horrible athlete,” he says. “I’m tall enough to play basketball but I’m horrible, and with football I’m a right footer but guide the ball down with my left hand.”
On a typical day on a typical week, he is up before 6am to get to the gym before starting work at Nova in the city by 8am and goes on air at 1pm. Then on weekends is when it really ramps up. In summer it’s not uncommon for him to work 8am-5pm Monday to Friday then head straight to an Adelaide United game at Hindmarsh Stadium and get home at 11pm.
On Saturday morning he’s back at Nova from 8am-noon. There is a four-hour window before he’s got to be at the Adelaide 36ers that night, before backing up at an Adelaide Strikers game at Adelaide Oval on the Sunday.
With 19-month-old-daughter Rayne and golden retriever Kimba at home, Walsh acknowledges he has a very understanding wife. “She’s the best. We’ve had moments where I’ve had to look at what I’m doing because I play hockey as well,” he says. “And I love that outlet to play sport, but I would be playing two games of hockey on a weekend and doing all this sports presenting.
“I don’t see it as work, but I’m working seven days a week, so it’s full on. It’s not something I’m going to be doing when I’m 50, so I guess it’s something I need to make the most of while I’m doing it. But I don’t go out. When I’m home, I’m in dad and husband mode and that’s it.”
In a way, Walsh’s family extends well beyond those under his roof at home. He has become so connected and attached to the athletes and players that he considers some of them among his closest friends, including Tarek Elrich at Adelaide United and Peter Siddle at the Strikers.
Just before this interview he opened a parcel that was sent to his office to find a signed shirt and handwritten note from former United winger Pablo Sanchez, who scored the winning goal in the 2016 A-League grand final and is now playing in Spain.
“When you move away from someone is when you start to value him. I thank football for giving me the opportunity to have met persons like you and your family,” Sanchez wrote. “Place this (shirt) in your dining room, it is an order.”
It’s that sort of thing that gives Walsh the greatest job satisfaction of all.
“I have so many mixed emotions when it comes to sport because I’m fortunate enough to meet the people behind the athlete,” he says. “With hosting, some of my closest friends are players from those sporting teams. Most recently I got to meet Chris Goulding when he was with the Boomers and I saw him in Adelaide (for the NBL Grand Final) and I had to say ‘mate, I’m going to have to barrack against you tonight’ and that is hard.
“And Peter Siddle and I have become quite good friends. I was at Adelaide Oval one day when he misfielded and the ball went to the boundary. I saw him swearing under his breath and there were two kids leaning over the boundary holding out their hands, and Sids made sure he went and touched their hands before running off.
“For me, those kids, their day has been made, and that’s an act he didn’t have to do, and that’s what I really admire.”
His friendship with United’s Elrich is also what led Walsh to his greatest “pinch me” moment when Adelaide won the A-League Grand Final in 2016.
“That was the most amazing experience I have had at any sporting organisation,” Walsh says. “The Adelaide United Football Club have made me one of their own and I’m just a fan boy.
“I do a chant where I go ‘Adelaide’ and the crowd goes ‘United’. I was that nervous standing in front of 50,000 people and I go ‘Adelaide’ and my voice breaks and everyone laughed.
“But we ended up winning that night and I was standing there wearing a championship T-shirt with these guys and Tarek said to me ‘come into the changerooms’ and I said ‘I can’t do that mate, I will never ever disrespect the sanctuary of a players’ changerooms’.”
But he did.
“It was unbelievable. I sat there with the players and coaching staff spraying beer around,” Walsh recalls.
“I thought ‘what is going on?’ then I jumped in the team bus, went to the presentations the next day, and for someone who is not an athlete and will never play professional sport, I felt like one of the team and that’s because of the relationship I make sure I build with the players.
“That trust has got to work both ways, so they know if I’m interviewing them at the end of a game, I will never put them in a position where they will feel uncomfortable answering a question. If I’m going to ask a curly question, I have to give them a heads up.”
Walsh is a big user of social media and reads the feedback he gets from sporting fans around the country. Despite the bold front he puts on at games and air of confidence that his voice exudes, he admits the negative stuff does affect him.
“I could have 100 nice things said about me on social media but if there’s one bad thing it makes me question myself,” he admits.
“I was bullied at high school a lot, and now I’ve got people coming up to me saying, ‘Hey man, long time no see’ and in my head I’m thinking, ‘Are you serious?’ and the same goes for people asking me for tickets.”
But whether he’s good at his job or not has become of secondary importance to Walsh, which brings the discussion back to LeBron James. “I’m a really loyal person and his (James) connection with his mother is unbelievable,” he says. “And my mum and I are inseparable, my mum is my best friend.”
When he left high school and made it big, he looked after all his friends.
“My three best mates — one is a plumber, one works in finance and one works in law — and they don’t give a shit what I do and I love that. They’re my close group of friends and they are Rayne’s three godfathers.
“No matter what happens in my work as long as I make decisions from the heart and I am a good person about it, I would rather be known as Jarrod the good person than Jarrod a good colleague or good at what he does.
“That’s more important than anything.”
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