The man rugby league fans call “Kevvie” smiles at his grandson as the years reel back to another little boy with a mop of white hair calling to him from across these same grounds. His own son, Billy.

Now 30, married to Rachel, also 30, and father to Hugo, Billy Walters joined the Broncos in 2022, continuing a rugby league dynasty with this particular club at its beating heart.

There is perhaps no other family as deeply associated with both the Broncos and, more broadly, rugby league, than the Walters clan.

Siblings Kevin, Kerrod and Steve Walters remain the only three brothers in rugby league history to represent both Queensland and Australia. Kevin Walters played in five grand final winning teams for the Broncos (and another for Canberra), and now his prodigal son Billy has returned to the fold after stints at Melbourne Storm and Wests Tigers.

Billy, a hooker, joined the team for the 2022 season. It has been a homecoming in every sense of the word for Billy, returning to the town where he grew up, watched his dad play and train, and where he knew – just as his son does now – all the players on the field.

In a quiet corner of the legendary Brisbane club, with Hugo on his lap and Rachel by his side, Billy reflects on growing up Bronco.

As a little tacker in the ’90s, he says, he knew all the big names – Alfie, Gordo, Pearl, Locky – just as Hugo now knows, and loves, the current line-up who he calls Walshy, Payno, Cobbo, Reyno and Patty.

“He is absolutely infatuated with them,” Billy laughs.

“He calls them ‘the boys’. Whenever we bring him to the club he keeps asking: ‘Where are the boys? Are the boys here? I want to see the boys.’”

So does much of Queensland it seems, with the Broncos currently enjoying robust membership numbers and riding a wave of popularity.

For Billy Walters – generally considered, like his dad before him, one of the nicest blokes in the league – that has translated to having to prove himself twice over.

Not only has he had to show he’s worthy of selection in one the game’s most beloved teams, he’s also had to show that he didn’t come by it by way of his surname.

Candidly, Billy says he was well aware there would be “a lot of talk” around his selection.

“We had discussions before I came back if it was going to be awkward, but in the end it kind of worked out perfectly,” he says.

“We tried to come back mid season 2021, but it just didn’t happen with the Tigers not letting me go, so when they eventually did let me go, it was a bit late in the year and then the Broncos were like ‘come in next year’, which turned out to be a blessing.

“I was coming back off a knee injury, so I wouldn’t have played good football and when you’re coming in and your dad is the coach and you’re not playing good footy, that’s not ideal,” he smiles.

“Whereas I got to come in for a fresh year, and I had a whole pre-season to build up trust with my teammates and show them I was prepared to work hard, play good football and earn my spot. I had time to get as fit as I could and as strong as I could and earn the respect of my teammates. Because, you know, there’s all this outside noise that I don’t listen to. As long as my teammates think I’m the best person for the job, that’s all that matters to me.”

Rachel, currently pregnant with the couple’s second child, says that she, too, no longer listens to that “outside noise”.

“I did find the public scrutiny hard initially, and there were a lot of comments around nepotism, but Bill stayed really calm and just got on with the job. He has had enough time to prove himself. He knows what he is capable of, and I know what he is capable of and I know his worth, so now we’re just very settled here and, for me, this move has been the best thing that’s ever happened to us as a family.”

Rachel still works four days a week as an occupational therapist and says the support their “Broncos family” has received has been exceptional.

“I didn’t really expect the community you get with Bill’s workplace. It’s something else, it’s a whole different, extra family to lean on. This life is a big roller coaster, so having people around you who understand that is pretty special.”

Now firmly an integral part of the team with more than 70 first grade matches behind him, Billy says he has been surprised with “just how right” it feels to don the maroon and gold.

“I grew up loving the Broncos and always wanted to play for the Broncos, but first I just wanted to play in the NRL. I think in the back of my mind it was always the Broncos, but I never really thought it would happen. Now that I have had the opportunity I am a bit shocked at how much I wanted to do this. We’ve been back for two years now, and think I wanted it more than I knew.”

The notoriously vocal Broncos fans (as one sports writer said, “If they don’t like you, you will know about it, loud and clear”) have also embraced the family, and these days, Billy says,

“If people come up to me in the street, they’re really friendly, and all they want to tell me is how much they love the club, how much they love Kevvie, and they tell me stories about my dad.”

There’s plenty to go round, with Kevin Walters stories – indeed the whole Walters clan stories the stuff of legend, going all the way back to Billy’s grandfather, Kevin Walters senior and his wife Sandra, raising five, rowdy Walters boys – Kevin, Kerrod, Steve, Andrew and Brett – at home in Ipswich during the ’70s.

Rachel Walters shudders a little at the thought of five Walters boys under one roof – and, at one time, all under five years old.

“Sandra must have been an absolute weapon,” she smiles.

But back to Kevin senior in 1980, driving in the family’s yellow Kingswood with a few kids in the back seat to Lang Park – as it was known then – for the first State of Origin in Brisbane.

“There were no pre-sales then,” Billy explains. “You just rocked up and tried to get a ticket. But they were all sold out.”

No worries, Billy laughs, Kevin senior went round the back, got out his wire cutters, made a hole in the fence and “everyone snuck through”.

“When you’re a Walters you’ll do anything to watch the footy,” he notes, adding that he remembers his Pop (Kevin senior) and Mama (Sandra) well.

“As a little kid I loved going to their house, they were the best people in the world.” It’s clear that the Walters are a close clan, and so, too, is Rachel’s family. She has a twin sister, Emily, who is also pregnant, an older sister Hayley, and moved with her parents, Norm Ownsworth and Carolyn Dunn, to Brisbane from Adelaide when she was two years old.

“I grew up in a very strong family unit and a very sporty one,” she says. “It was sport, sport sport on weekends, playing it and watching it.

“We were more of an AFL family, we followed the Lions when we moved to Brisbane, but then I started to date Billy, so ….” So now Rachel says she is “all in”, a card-carrying member of the Bronco nation and says that she’s more or less resigned herself that her children probably will be too.

“Before Hugo was born I was like, ‘You know, if he wants to do something else rather than footy, if he wants to be anything, of course he can’, and I still think that, but then I see him with his little footy in his hand, playing in the yard … he plays footy all day, absolutely loving all the boys in the team and I think, ‘Oh, who was I kidding?’”, she laughs.

But whatever Hugo – or his brother or sister on the way – wants to be when they grow up, they will have the unconditional love of both parents who say they work “as a team”.

The couple met about nine years ago at a mutual friend’s house. Billy says he was “very smitten, straight away”, Rachel not so much.

“I thought he was a bit of a dork,” she smiles.

Billy shakes his head and says, “I should have let you answer first – but I was smitten, and at the time she did have a boyfriend, so I had to just keep it cool and wait and hope that he stumbled, and he did, thank God.”

Hands-on parents, they are very affectionate towards their son – Hugo gets lots of hugs and is showered in kisses from his mum and dad.

“Bill is a great father,” Rachel says. “He’s always been the preferred parent to Hugo, which says a lot. Here’s the thing about Bill, he loves to make people smile and laugh and feel good and he’s brought that to his parenting style. Bill is a kid at heart, so they are always playing, wrestling and tackling. He’s a very loving father, and that’s pretty beautiful to see.”

For his part, Billy says that Hugo is “the best kid because he has the best mum in the world”.

“Rachel is so loving and natural with him, but she’s also done all the hard stuff, the routine stuff, getting him into a great eating and sleeping routine and that’s not easy. I think we are a really good team, and becoming parents has bonded us more as a couple.”

Becoming a parent has also made Billy think about his own mother, Kim, who died from breast cancer when he was just four years old. Kim Walters – Kevin’s first wife – died at just 30 years old in February 1998, after 18 months of treatment for breast cancer.

The couple had three children, Jack, Billy and Jett when she passed away.

In March, 1998, and in accordance with Kim’s wishes for a community service to provide support for other women with the disease, Kevin Walters launched the Kim Walters Choices Program at the Wesley Hospital, and since then it has helped thousands of women navigate their own breast cancer path.

For Billy, who says he doesn’t remember too much about his mum, there is comfort to be found in all the women who have been helped in her name.

“I was only four when it all went down, so I don’t remember a whole lot and sometimes, I don’t know, I wonder if it’s a blessing in disguise that I don’t remember that time. I wonder if remembering would make it all the harder. I guess all I’ve really known is life without her, but I do know that she loved us all so much and obviously I would absolutely love to have her be here. I do feel very proud of her, of what she wanted to achieve and has, and that something good can come from something so sad.”

Walters is keen to acknowledge the loving parenting he received from his father’s second wife Narelle, who Kevin wed in 2012. Together they added two more children, Harry (2003) and Ava (2005) to the Walters clan, siblings to Jack, Billy and Jett. And after most games, the entire Walters tribe, young and old, gather in the dressing rooms for a family snap.

All of them, one way or another carry the family name, but perhaps no one quite as heavily as Billy, who candidly admits, “I always knew I could never be as good a player as Kevvie.

“I think, growing up, I knew that, I mean he won six premierships, but it helped me in terms of growing up because people would always say ‘that’s Kevin Walters’ son’, so I knew I had eyes on me, always.

“It made me try harder, and it made me strive harder, but Kevvie, well, he was pretty good,” Billy laughs.

Kevvie, by the way, is what Billy calls his father at training and during games, just like everybody else does.

Off the field, however, it’s “Dad”. “I’ve only had a couple of slip-ups,” he smiles.

Off the field, the couple have just become ambassadors for the Children’s Hospital Foundation’s Sapphire Committee, which raises funds for sick kids, their families and the life- saving equipment they need.

It’s a perfect match with both Billy and Rachel passionate about meeting, working with, and raising money for children with disabilities; Rachel in her work as an occupational therapist and Billy with his association with What Ability, a not for profit foundation that gives kids with disabilities community activities to take part in, whether it be a day at the beach, a swim at the local pool, a movie or a kick around with a Broncos player.

“I really enjoy it,” says Billy, who is known for his lack of ego.

“I always worry that maybe the kids might feel disappointed that it’s not Reecey (Reece Walsh) or Patty (Patrick Carrigan) visiting them, but they’re always so happy to see you, they give you these great big smiles, and that makes me really happy too.” ■