Phil Walsh murder: A giant heart beats no more

PHIL Walsh was a people person whose enthusiasm was contagious, writes Mark Robinson. He was a curiosity and that is said in the nicest possible way.

Sarah's pictures week 3 - Crows coach Phil Walsh starting his day at the Adelaide Football Club. Photo Sarah Reed

AN interview with Phil Walsh, stopping and starting over two hours at Adelaide headquarters in April, eerily is still on the dictaphone.

It is an audience with a man with a deeply personal narrative about where he came from as a child, how he grew to love football and allowed football to swallow him — perhaps too much — and why he was a driven, solemn, caring, fiercely demanding and meticulous football coach.

Gee, he was funny. He was weird and nerdy and outrageously funny. He wasn’t a joke teller, he was a storyteller. And when the punchline loomed, an excited Walsh would quicken and heighten his speech, so by the end, his garble of words and maniacal laughter meant you couldn’t help but laugh yourself. That made him a people person.

There was a fascination with Phil Walsh. Cast your mind back to when the Crows players were first asked about the idiosyncrasies of their new coach. They’d smile and sort of roll their eyes. There was a curiosity about him, but there was also deep affection.

His enthusiasm was contagious. It would pick you up and carry you off to wherever he wanted to take you.

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To Hamilton, where he grew up one of seven siblings, to his battler parents, to Collingwood, Richmond and Brisbane as a player, to West Coast and Port Adelaide as a coach, and to far-flung places in history such as the American Civil War, which he used as motivation for his players.

His players must be hurting. And the players’ parents. In fact, all the football world is hurting, for in some way he touched everyone. He was a curiosity and that is said in the nicest possible way. He spoke a lot, and loudly, and passionately, and listened with the same intensity.

But maybe not enough to those who mattered most.

Walsh was killed yesterday and his son has been charged with his murder. They are ghastly words. The utter craziness of what happened in those final moments and minutes are unimaginable. Maybe they will be forever unspeakable for Meredith Walsh.

Clearly, father and son had had a torrid relationship.

Listening again to Walsh speak yesterday of the disconnect he had with his son for a near on a decade, largely through his time with Port Adelaide, is not in any way spiritual. It is eerie and foreboding in a sense. People have called it speaking from the grave, but it wasn’t like that. It was Walsh speaking from the heart.

Asked if he was a good father, he said: “That’s a really hard question ... that’s a really hard question to answer.”

Other coaches and fathers were spoken about, such as David Parkin and Kevin Sheedy, who have touched on the impact of football on their families. Walsh understood.

“The bonus of me taking the Crows job is my son is 26 and my daughter is 22, so the collateral damage isn’t so big.

“But have I been a good father? To my son, I had a disconnect because of footy.”

Did he play footy?

“He had injuries, he tried to, but then he couldn’t ...

“You know, I just immersed myself, got consumed and was selfish with as much time I committed to footy. I’m basically talking about my 10 years at Port Adelaide, just the desperation to win a premiership and I thought it was all about me, when it’s all about the players.

Phil Walsh shares a laugh with his Adelaide players. Picture: Sarah Reed

“I lost that connection and I’m trying to reconnect with my son, which I have done.

“In a selfish way, I taught my daughter to surf, and that’s my release, so when I go surfing, I take her. Now I’ve got my son into it as well and that’s what I should’ve done a long time ago.

“A couple of months ago, we all went surfing together at Middleton and it was almost the best day I’ve had ... ever.

“We all got a wave, went to the bakery on the way home, we smiled, and laughed.”

Asked for the names of his children, Walsh said no. “I don’t want to do that,” he said.

I didn’t ask him why.

“Absolutely one of the best days of my life,” he said. “Just fantastic.” It was the kind of day, he said, which reminded him that coaching was a lonely job.

‘’It is really lonely, this is lonely,’’ he says waving a hand around an empty office. “I used to shut down all relationships because it was too hard to be in the moment with people, hard to be in their moment, if you know what I mean.’’

WALSH thrived on what he called man relationships. He had them frequently with his players. They were about honest and direct communication, of standing up and being a man. Nothing less would prepare the players for the AFL competition, he said.

“I try to get them to understand this competition is so hard and so ruthless and that’s what I’m preparing them for.’’

Walsh probably broke coaching protocols when he allowed me to watch on the iPad a pre-match speech he gave to the players the night before, I think, the Showdown in Round 5.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. And he made me promise.

They were all in a room. Walsh sat on a chair at the front, his players on chairs about him. There was one voice, except when Walsh asked questions and wanted answers. It lasted 15 minutes and Walsh had restored my faith in the rugged beauty of oratory motivation. The strategy was previously done, he said, and this talk was about the battle ahead.

It was beautiful and raw. He swore and challenged and pricked at his players. He spoke of a Civil War battle, where one regiment attacked without another regiment and the first regiment was wiped out. “WE CAN’T GO ALONE ... WE DO THIS TOGETHER,” he said.

Tex spoke, as did Sloane and Dangerfield, and the sense of togetherness was spellbinding.

When it was finished, he said: “How good was that?”

He wasn’t talking about himself or grandstanding. It was about the essence of football, of a coach and his players gathering for the impending storm. You got a feeling about the depth of his man conversations.

He had no hesitation seeking man conversations to prepare himself, either.

He had a thirst for improvement and development and with a work-life balance already out of whack, Walsh needed advice as he embarked on senior coaching.

So, after his appointment at the Crows, he sought counsel from an unlikely source, Collingwood’s Nathan Buckley.

Why Bucks? “We were talking and I asked because I wanted to know, and he’s been in the caper for four years.

“I asked, ‘How do you get sorted?’, and he gave me ... great advice.’’ Walsh was 55. Buckley is 42.

The Crows, however, were concerned for Walsh at the halfway mark of the season.

In yet another riveting interview, this time on Fox Footy’s AFL 360 two weeks ago, Walsh revealed Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan and chairman Rob Chapman had told him he had to aim for a greater work-life balance.

“They said to me, ‘That’s 10 weeks down, Walshy, you really can’t keep operating this way, you’ve got to ... get your work-life balance in order’. So I’m hopefully going to try and do that in the second half of the year,” Walsh said.

“I did get a little bit tired. I did look at my press conferences prior to the Carlton game and I could see I was a little bit tired, so I’m energised and hopefully I’ll coach the best I’ve coached all year.”

Still, Walsh was also at his devilish best.

IT’S common knowledge Walsh detested being asked about the future of Patrick Dangerfield. Before the interview, I told Gerard Whateley he had to ask the question, sort of good cop, bad cop. And Gerard did, and Walsh this time didn’t get angry.

“We had a bet over here who was going to ask the question and everyone said ‘Robbo is the ratbag, so he’ll do it for certain’. And I said, ‘No, Robbo and I get on OK, I reckon it will be Gerard’.’’ The clip is on heraldsun.com.au, so have a look if nothing else but to hear Walsh’s infectious laugh again.

Phil Walsh is gone and we hardly knew him. It is a tragic and senseless loss because there was so much good in this man’s life, and so much more to come.

When his coaching days were over, he said, he hankered for retirement to a country town where he could again enjoy football at its grassroots.

Walsh as a player for Richmond.

“I want to go back to a community when it’s all over,” he said. “When I played football in Hamilton ... the whole footy team actually looked after you, if you know what I mean. It was part of the family. ‘Hey, Walshy, pull your head in, mate, come on, no trouble, you’ve had enough, go home’. And we’ve lost a bit of that, I reckon.”

There was one story and one moment that is lasting from the conversation in April.

One is about friendships and one is about footy clubs.

The story came at the end of two hours of conversation.

“Listen to this story,” he says, always the storyteller.

It’s Round 1, this year versus North Melbourne and his best mate, Frankie Scarce from Bendigo, was at the Byron Bay Blues Festival. Frankie decided to surprise his mate and fly over. When the game was played and won, Frankie walked unannounced into the Crows rooms.

“I said, mate, ‘How did you get in here?’. And Frankie had just jumped the fence, walked down the race and came straight up to me. It was a beautiful moment,’’ Walsh said.

“Frankie says, ‘Well done’, and I thought, how good is this, just two battlers, hey, two battlers and have a look at us. It was a magic moment.”

The moment came soon after our conversation began.

It was about 5.30am, still dark outside, and Walsh was interrupted when someone walked into the coaches room.

“This is Vinny, our head trainer,” Walsh says, “Vinny is normally in with me for a workout in the morning. Salt of the earth, he is. Hey Vinny, how long you been here?”

Vinny: “Twenty-three years.”

Walsh: “Twenty-three years, how’s that, 23 years. He’s a good fella, Vinny. He loves it. He loves the club. He says to me all the time, ‘I’ll see you in and I’ll see you go and I’ll still be here’.”

And Walsh laughed that maniacal laugh again.