Remembering former Adelaide coach Phil Walsh five years after his death
A freak accident at training saw ex-Crow Sam Siggins fracture Brent Reilly’s skull, ending his career. As Siggins’ mental health deteriorated, former Adelaide coach Phil Walsh helped him through this difficult time.
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Sam Siggins never played an AFL game in three years on the Crows list but will never forget the care Phil Walsh showed for him - right up until the very last conversation they ever had.
Highly respected in AFL circles for his football mind, the former Adelaide Crows coach also set extremely high standards of every one of his players be they a star or a player like Siggins whenever they set foot in the club.
“An example of what Phil was like we weren’t allowed to walk (during training),” Siggins said.
“We had to be running at all times and I think Phil showed what his character was like in the media and some of his interviews.
“But deep down behind the coach as well he was just a really good man, he helped me so much obviously after having that training accident with Brent Reilly.”
That training accident with Brent Reilly turned Siggins’ world upside down.
In his third season at the Crows since being picked up from Tasmanian side Lauderdale, Siggins’ knee accidentally fractured now Adelaide coach Reilly’s skull in a drill at Thebarton Oval in February 2015.
Reilly was raced to hospital for emergency surgery and the 203-gamer would not play again.
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Siggins started to lose his passion of being an AFL footballer and his mental health began to deteriorate.
And while he had played no AFL games, this was where the care Walsh had for every one of his players came to the fore.
“He (Walsh) sat down with me and I will never forget the last conversation I had with Phil before (he died), one of the things he said to me was just keep moving forward and obviously it was a tough period for me and he would call me every day after that incident,” he said.
“We’d just have a chat about life and that was one of the big things about Phil, yeah footy was important to us and him but at the end of the day there was more to life than footy so he helped us off-field as well which a lot of coaches may not do that and he helped us massively.
“That was a really tough time after that (the Reilly incident), I was really struggling and I lost a lot of passion for footy.
“There were times when I didn’t rock up for training and I’d have a chat with Phil about that and he understood that and where I was from a mental point of view.
“He would call me on a daily basis and have a chat about how I was going, obviously trying to help me get back to footy, but also for me even to this day I look back on some of the values Phil taught me and some of the advice he gave me and I feel the way I go about life now I do use some of his values on a daily basis.”
So like the rest of his former Crows teammates the death of Walsh - just 12 games into his senior coaching career at Adelaide five years ago - hit Siggins hard.
“I got a missed call from (assistant coach) Darren Milburn at about 5.45am and I let it ring,” Siggins said.
“I called him back and he sort of explained a little bit to me but never really explained too much detail but told me Phil had passed away.
“I remember going in and speaking to my partner now wife Madeline about it and that was the thing with Phil he touched a lot of people in the footy club, he was only there for eight months but he had a massive impact with the partners as well.
“And I remember Maddie balling her eyes out straight away and I was in complete shock, and then going into the footy club the locker room was silent, the boys were in tears.”
Walsh’s death, after being stabbed by his son Cy who in 2016 was found not guilty of murder due to mental incompetence and ordered to spend the rest of his life under mental health supervision, sent shockwaves through Adelaide and the AFL.
“The big thing from the club was that we spent time together and that we weren’t alone,” Siggins said.
“The player welfare manager Emma Barr who is still there now, she is such a strong woman and she has helped that footy club so much since she came in... I don’t know if any other player welfare manager would have gone through as much as her.
“Everyone felt really supported by the community... I felt like it was first class the way the AFL and the Adelaide Footy Club handled it.”
But despite this Siggins needed to get out of Adelaide and return to Tasmania for his mental health after Walsh’s death.
“I was struggling a bit mentally before (the training accident) and once it happened I lost a lot of passion for footy and Phil helped me with a lot of that,” he said.
“He got me back to playing and I started to come right again but once Phil passed away having that person I could talk to on a daily basis taken away hit me even harder.
Siggins returned to Tasmania in 2015 and has played in the state league there, and also had a stint in Geelong’s VFL team.
“For me I feel like I’m in a real good space mentally,” he said.
“When I first went over to Adelaide I was 18, pretty immature and didn’t really feel like I was mentally ready to play AFL. I felt like I had the talent but I wasn’t mentally or physically ready.”
Siggins said he had no doubt some of his former teammates would also be reflecting on what Walsh taught them five-years on.
“There’s no other Phil Walsh, he was a different beast,” Siggins said.
“I’m really grateful that while I knew Phil for just eight months it felt like we as a group knew him for our whole lives.
“That’s the sort of connection he had with us.”
Five years on: Enduring tribute to Phil Walsh
-Reece Homfray
A Crows hat sits at the base of a red oak tree behind Adelaide Oval which is dwarfed by nearby Moreton Bay figs and its leaves stripped bare by winter that tells you it’s footy season.
But this tree also tells you that Friday, July 3, is five years since Australian football lost one of its deepest thinkers, most respected minds and loved coaches in Phil Walsh.
The tree stands in his memory and the mulch scattered around it is made from the thousands of flowers that were left at the Adelaide Football Club in the days after his death, because when the tears wouldn’t stop, supporters didn’t know what else to do.
It was planted by the council in the months after Walsh died at the age of 55 – just 12 games into his senior coaching career at the Crows – and a plaque was put in place during a private gathering of senior Adelaide figures Rob Chapman and Andrew Fagan, Walsh’s wife Meredith, one of her friends and one of Walsh’s best in Rob Snowdon.
They wanted the tree – known by its botanical name ‘quercus rubra’ which is probably what Japanese-speaking Walsh would have called it – to provide football fans with somewhere to remember him but to also symbolise new growth and a way forward, as hard as that may have been to see at the time. ‘To endure with strength’, say the words at the bottom of the plaque.
“I’ve stopped by there half a dozen times since. I don’t go to the footy much but when I do I normally park down there and walk past it,” said Snowdon, Port Adelaide’s former football manager who delivered a moving tribute at Walsh’s memorial service in 2015.
“The idea of the tree was to say ‘thanks for your love and thoughts, the tree is growing so let’s keep moving’.”
Hand-picked by Adelaide Oval curator Damian Hough, it was just over a 1m tall with 12 skinny branches when it went in the ground and now stands over 5m and its branches have doubled in number and size. They are heading in every direction, just like Walsh’s disciples who played under him at Adelaide, Port Adelaide and West Coast.
“I thought the tree was a really nice touch, and Rob Snowdon was a rock to Meredith, the family and even the football club during those times,” Adelaide chairman Rob Chapman said.
“And I’m happy to say I forged a good friendship with Rob through that, and we still have a regular catch up, a coffee, phone call, text message here and there, and that’s something that’s come out of it.
“Without hesitation I can say he (Walsh) is still one of the people who have influenced so much and so many in such a short time.
“He was so confident in the knowledge and experience that he’d gleaned over 55 years and all of his time in football, and his appointment as coach was his opportunity to let all of that unfold, and we could see that.”
Walsh died after being stabbed by his son Cy who in 2016 was found not guilty of murder due to mental incompetence and ordered to spend the rest of his life under mental health supervision.
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The memorial tree sits outside Adelaide Oval in the parklands almost directly behind the old scoreboard but those who knew Walsh best say that to have really known him, you had to be on the inside of those gates, or the rooms.
“He had an amazing memory for names,” said Bill Forrestal, who has been Adelaide’s changeroom doorman for 16 years and is helped by son Nick on game day.
“I was still working at the time (early 2015) and Nick had just finished Year 12 and he said to me ‘dad, they’ve got a members night on at the club I might go down and help’.
“And I said to him ‘OK but remember they’ve got a new coach so don’t get in his way’ because I’d heard that he (Walsh) had a strong personality.
“Later that night I went to pick up Nick and I said ‘how’d it go, did you talk to the players?’ and he said ‘yes’, and I said ‘did you happen to see Phillip Walsh?’
“Nick said ‘yes, he spoke to me, he asked me who I was and what I was doing, and I told him my name’s Nick and I help dad on the door on game day’.”
That was it.
“A few weeks later the club was getting ready for its first pre-season game and I thought I better go and meet the coach because every coach is different with how they want the door done on game day – who comes in and out,” Forrestal said.
“I walked into the open plan office at West Lakes and saw Phil and said ‘Hi, I’m Bill your doorman and I’ve been here for 11 years’ and he said ‘G’day Bill, yeah I know, Nick’s already told me that’.”
‘I QUOTE HIM QUITE A BIT ACTUALLY’
The last piece of Walsh’s coaching puzzle at Adelaide that year was to bring Darren Glass across from West Coast where they’d worked together for five years.
“I joined the Crows because Phil Walsh and I had built up a good, strong relationship at West Coast and I wanted to be part of the culture he would create here,” Glass said at the time.
Glass left the Crows at the end of 2015 and spent two years as an assistant coach at Hawthorn before returning to the Eagles as their list manager last year.
“I quote him quite a bit, actually, when I was a coach at Hawthorn and even now from a list management point of view (at West Coast),” Glass said.
“One of the great things Walshy used to say … because obviously there’s a lot of up and down in AFL, you lose and the coach is no good and it’s boom or bust, he used to say ‘it’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems’.
“And it was a great leveller and a reminder of the perspective you need in the up and down nature that winning and losing can bring. He always had that line for you and it was a good one.
“He could take feedback from the players, he was always very open, despite being incredibly opinionated and polarising because some people got him and some didn’t, but if he trusted your thoughts and opinions he was very open to feedback.
“I thought of him a lot as a coach, he was incredibly dedicated and passionate and the level of detail he would go to – he’d watch every game, understand every player, clearly do his research because if we had a new player arrive at the football club he would know where he grew up and what school he went to.
“He took an interest in you as a person and players always appreciate that.
“I remember rocking up to the footy club one day and he loved his red wine and we’d been chatting about it a few weeks before, and just randomly he says ‘hey I got this bottle of wine from the Margaret River, I remember you telling me you liked this vineyard’, and he had this bottle of wine for me.
“He was one of the few people that I’d turn to and seek guidance from with things outside of just football.”
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Matthew Primus worked with Walsh as a player at Port Adelaide including in their 2004 premiership year, and later as a coach under Mark Williams.
Like Glass, he thinks of Walsh when he opens a decent bottle of red – or a bad one.
“When I went straight out of playing is when I got to really work with him when he was the midfield coach (at Port),” Primus said.
“And getting to know him a bit different. The stage before he had his close shave with the bus in South America we had a fondness for red wine and like everything he had a strong opinion of what was good and what was average.
“I remember those times enjoying a bottle of wine when we had functions together or were at each other’s house in the limited time we had in the hustle and bustle of AFL footy.
“We’d also catch up when I was in Adelaide and he’d come over with West Coast, they were good memories.
“I also remember ringing him up after his first press conference when he got the job at the Crows, and I think it was well noted not his disdain for the media but his lack of wanting to talk to them, and I said ‘mate, you nailed that press conference, I can’t believe it’.
“So it was seeing his ability to change because in certain things he was stuck in his ways but not in others like his philosophies on coaching and coaching people, he constantly kept evolving.
“You never walked out of a conversation with him without learning something, whether it was coaching or life or other sport – or red wine.”
After his death, Adelaide moved swiftly to re-name its best team man award the ‘Phil Walsh Best Team Man Award’ which in 2015 went to James Podsiadly.
“100 per cent it meant something,” Podsiadly said.
“Footy for me was about playing with my mates, trying to become a leader and develop myself, and I think I said it on the night that all the guys I played with at Werribee, Geelong and Adelaide, whoever won the team man award I always saw them as good people so it was humbling when I won it.
“My time with Phil was only 6-8 months but in that time I saw him challenge people and support them – he had this amazing balance to do both. And when you have a group that understands that and it’s a two-way street, that’s when you get the best out of people.
“We weren’t able to get to know him that well as a person because as a senior coach coming into a footy club it takes time just to work your way through the system.
“So the time together was only brief but he made an impact and he will certainly never be forgotten.”
‘HE LOVED THAT BOARD’
Among the items on display at the front of Walsh’s memorial service was a surfboard which was given to him by then Power skipper Travis Boak in 2014, and Boak still thinks of Walsh at times when he paddles into the ocean.
“He loved that board,” Boak said.
“We both loved surfing and he was looking for a new board, at the time I knew someone at FireWire (surfboard manufacturer) and was able to organise one for him.
“We always talked about surfing and were hoping to get a wave in together but unfortunately never got the chance.
“He was an amazing mentor and friend.”
Walsh liked the ocean so much that he joined his Crows players in his Speedos at 5am in the dark at Brighton Jetty one April morning when he followed through on a threat that if they lost the ground ball statistic on the weekend then they were going in.
“We didn’t go off the jetty but we swam to the end of it,” Crows defender Brodie Smith said.
“5am at Brighton Jetty and he said ‘if one media person rocks up, you’re all in deep trouble and we’ll go again’.
“We were sitting in the cars at 5am in the dark with our lights on and we see this old bloke walking past the cars in red Speedos and a towel over his shoulder, and sure enough it’s Walshy setting the example.
“We had boys rock up in wetsuits and jumpers ready to go and he said ‘everything off’ so we were all down to our jocks or Speedos and in we went into the freezing cold water.
“We swam to the end of the jetty and had a meeting treading water, then swam back. As much as he was very hard on us and pushed us, for whatever reason there was this huge amount of respect back towards him and you knew that no matter how hard he was on you, he really cared for you.”
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Smith says they still talk about ‘Walshy’ at West Lakes.
“The way he went about training and how training should look, doing everything right, when we walked into team meetings everyone had to be in the exact same uniform, you couldn’t have different socks, he was really particular about getting all the little things right,” Smith said.
“We don’t go to that extent anymore but the message of doing the little things well is still there.
“And even little things like someone at training rolling onto their left foot and hitting a kick and someone yelling out ‘that’s eliiiite’ which is one of his great sayings.
“So things like that are definitely around the footy club and I know the guys who were lucky enough to be around that year and spend time with him definitely hold a lot of his traits and characteristics close to him.”
Walsh has been gone for five years but football still remembers him fondly.
As the wind whistled through the parklands behind Adelaide Oval last week, what was left of the autumn leaves on the ground were swirling around in a meaningless pattern.
And then there was Walsh’s tree. Standing upright, stoic and still.
Enduring. With strength.
Originally published as Remembering former Adelaide coach Phil Walsh five years after his death