The Tex Walker TV gaffe that inflamed feud with Kane Cornes
THE first rule of broadcasting is be careful what you say around the microphone. It’s something Adelaide captain Taylor Walker forgot when he fired off a barb to longtime Port Adelaide and media rival Kane Cornes on TV earlier this year.
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IS this the point the relationship between two of South Australian footy’s biggest names fractured beyond repair?
Popular AFL personality Billy Brownless has revealed Walker was getting mic’d up for an appearance on The Sunday Footy Show when he was overheard calling longtime media rival Kane Cornes a d---head — and had no idea the former Port Adelaide games record holder was listening behind the scenes.
“I don’t know if he knew that we had audio through our headsets and it was Tex and he was in Darwin,” Brownless told Triple M’s Rush Hour. “And we go, ‘G’day’. And (host) Tony Jones goes, ‘G’day, the boys are here ready to go’.
“And Tex says, ‘Is Kane on?’ And Kane’s down the end there. And Tony goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, he’s on’. And he (Walker) goes, ‘Ahh s---’. And then he’s gone to his media manager: ‘He’s on. The d---head is on’. Not knowing that Kane can hear all of this.”
The comment adds more fire to a heated relationship that has seen the pair trade barbs on social media and Cornes question Walker’s captaincy in the wake of last year’s grand final loss and throughout this season.
“Walker was hardly sighted in the first half of the upset defeat at the hands of Collingwood on Friday night,” Cornes wrote in one of his opinion pieces for The Advertiser after Adelaide’s loss to Collingwood at Adelaide Oval in Round 4.
“His lack of presence and mediocre effort at ground level in the second quarter was obvious and not conducive to a captain’s game.”
After the article, Walker said he “probably” wouldn’t say hello to 2004 Power premiership on-baller Cornes in a public setting.
“I suppose that’s what he gets paid to do, make headlines but I suppose week in, week out it gets a bit long in the tooth,” said Walker of Cornes in a sign of the friction between the pair.
Cornes reignited the feud after Adelaide’s Round 19 loss to Melbourne when he said it was time for the Crows to hand the captaincy over to re-signed Rory Sloane.
“I’ve said that Rory Sloane just looks the captain to be at Adelaide, he certainly ticks every box for me the way that he plays, the way he leads and how popular he is with the fans over here,” Cornes told SEN.
“If it was me, I would be making a change in captaincy there.
“Taylor’s done all the pushing and shoving behind the ball for a while, it’s OK, unless you put your head over the footy.
“He’s had some moments this year where he’s really let himself down and there was one spoken about quite heavily against Collingwood earlier on the year where he ran over the footy.”
Walker, who has to sit out the rest of the season after copping a two-game ban for rough conduct against GWS on Saturday, responded by saying he had no plans to stand down from the role any time.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,’’ Walker said.
“It depends on whether I listen to it or not. I’ve got a lot of people that I trust and until they tell me (otherwise) I am pretty confident that I will continue to do the job.”
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