Robert Walls fixed his gaze and his ire on Carlton president John Elliott in the cramped dressing rooms at The Oval in London.

It was October 1987, and Australian football’s “Battle of Britain” had sensationally exploded between Carlton and North Melbourne in the preceding two hours.

What was meant to be a post-season global advertisement for the game turned into on-field anarchy, and Walls blamed Elliott’s pre-game arrogance for much of what unfolded.

The mayhem was sparked by a “king hit” from North Melbourne teenager Alastair Clarkson that broke the jaw of Carlton’s Ian Aitken.

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A furious Walls, who a fortnight earlier had coached the Blues to their 15th flag, had instructed his players to ensure Clarkson wasn’t allowed to walk off the ground unscathed.

But by the time the coach made his way back to the rooms after the game, his fury was fixed on his own president, who was then not only one of the most powerful men in Australia, but also being touted as a future Prime Minister.

To hell with the consequences, Walls thought. He was going to let Elliott have it with both barrels.

“After the game we were in this very small cricket dressing room … Elliott was there with his Foster’s mates and I was looking at my blokes all battered and bruised and bleeding,” Walls recalled in the Sacked podcast.

“I yelled across the room, ‘Bloody disgrace … we are here playing for this … this is bullsh-t’.”

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Walls detailed how Elliott was at fault for not only fixturing a game he didn’t want his players to play in, then delivering a pre-game jibe he believed incited the violence.

“The night before (the game) the two teams had dinner together and John Elliott gets up and says ‘If we win the game, we’ll get the $10,000 (prizemoney) and put it on the bar and if North wins, you can go and pay your coach’,” Walls said.

“He was talking about the great John Kennedy. I could see North Melbourne people (fuming), and it was on from the first bounce.

“We had just won the flag, my boys had been on the drink … and two weeks later, we were in a grudge match.

“Alastair Clarkson knocked Ian Aitken out — broke his jaw.

Walls’ only regret came after he flung a walkie-talkie at Kennedy and his lieutenant John Dugdale in a pique of anger.

He has no remorse, however, over his post-game spray towards Elliott.

As far back as his first interview for the Carlton job with Elliott, chief executive Ian Collins and football manager Wes Lofts following the 1985 season, the president had warned him: “Us three run the joint.”

A reminder came when Walls received a stinging rebuke from Collins at a meeting the morning after the “Battle of Britain”.

“(Collins) said, ‘How dare you speak to the president of the Carlton Football Club like that!’” Walls said.

“I said, ‘I couldn’t give a stuff’.

“I went back to my room and my wife said, ‘How did it go? Are they going to sack you?’.

“I said, ‘They won’t sack me after we have won a flag, but when the wheels get wobbly down the track — and they eventually will — I will be gone’.

“Then 18 months later, I was gone.”

RUMBLINGS OVER RHYS AND THE ’87 FLAG

In the week leading up to the 1987 Grand Final — just a few weeks before his confrontation with Elliott at The Oval — Walls hatched a plan to play David Rhys-Jones in an unorthodox match-up on Hawthorn superstar Dermott Brereton.

If the move worked, he would be seen as a genius. If it didn’t, and Carlton lost, he knew Elliott would have sacked him.

“I knew going into the game that if it didn’t work, my chances of staying (as coach) were pretty slim. I thought that would be the end of it.”

Walls’ four-man match committee disagreed with the positional switch, as did the president.

“I got to training on the Thursday and John Elliott … said, ‘Why would you want to change a winning team?’,” Walls said.

“After training, Wes Lofts said, ‘Do you still want Rhys to be centre half-back? We can’t go into a Grand Final with a coach not having the team he wants’.”

The match committee relented and Rhys-Jones rose to the challenge.

He won the North Smith Medal, with a best field blanketing of Brereton helping the Blues win by 33 points, and Walls’ job security seemed assured.

‘IF YOU HAD ANY BALLS, YOU WOULD SACK ME’

In a stunning reversal of fortune, Carlton had won only two games heading into the Round 10 1989 game against lowly Brisbane at Princes Park.

The Blues clung to a narrow lead late in the game before Warwick Capper — of all people — marked outside his normal range.

As Walls recalled: “(Capper) takes the mark 55m out, (he’d) never kicked a goal longer than 40m, and he just puts it through.”

Brisbane won by three points. The wheels swiftly turned against Walls, as he had predicted to his wife a year-and-a-half earlier, immediately after the shock loss to the Bears.

Unbeknown to Walls, Collins flew to Canberra to speak with Alex Jesaulenko about returning as coach just hours after Capper sunk the Blues.

Walls realised his fate was sealed when he took a call from Lofts on the Monday, requesting a meeting at his Hawthorn home.

After the call, Walls turned to his wife and said: “They’re going to sack me.”

“I drove to Loftsy’s house knowing I would be sacked. I got to the house and looked down his driveway and could see this white Volvo, which I knew was Collo’s.

“Loftsy opens the door and he said, ‘We’re in a bit of strife’. He said to me, ‘They want you to resign’. I said, ‘I am not going to resign. And by the way, is that Collo’s car back there?’.

“He sort of mumbled and said (Collins is) in the kitchen. I said, ‘Well, tell him to come up here’ and he (Collins) came up and said ‘We want you to resign’.

In hindsight, Walls admits he was too hard on the Carlton players following the 1987 flag success, saying: “I just drove them relentlessly … I was too brutal, hard and uncompromising.”

BAD NEWS BEARS

Walls interviewed for the West Coast coaching role, but lost out to Mick Malthouse.

After a year off, he took on the Brisbane Bears’ basket case, and worked against a myriad of handicaps to drive them into the finals in his final season.

He experienced the weird and the wonderful, including a regular instance where the eccentric millionaire owner Reuben Pelerman would regularly go through the process of “locking the gates” at Carrara, seemingly shutting down the club.

The first time it happened, it shocked Walls, until football boss Shane O’Sullivan told him: “Don’t worry, he does that all the time.”

Walls rode the highs and lows of the Brisbane experience, along with working with a host of young talent including Nathan Buckley (for one year), Marcus Ashcroft, Shaun Hart, Chris Scott, Nigel Lappin and Michael Voss.

His time with the club ended with its first finals appearance, against his old side Carlton.

TIGER CULL

Walls will never forget his 347th — and last — game as an AFL coach.

It was at Football Park and the team he was coaching, Richmond, was trailing the Crows by more than 20 goals.

A message flashed on the scoreboard, saying, ‘Thanks for Coming’. Walls thought to himself: “I don’t think I’ll be coming here again.”

He hadn’t intended to coach Richmond, but took it on when John Northey opted to leave Punt Rd for Brisbane.

Walls recalled: “I should never have taken the job. I was pretty much worn out after 14 years coaching.

“The first year, we won 11 and lost 11. The second year we were six wins and 11 losses when I got sacked (after Round 17 in 1997).

“When I was sacked at Carlton, I was really disappointed and angry and upset in some ways,” he said. “When I was sacked at Richmond, I thought, ‘I am glad to be out of the joint’.”

MEDIA, THE EAGLES AND MEATLOAF

Thankfully, Walls wasn’t lost to football after his coaching career ended. He spent the next two decades as one of the game’s most forthright media performers.

Without fear or favour, he called it as he saw it, and didn’t care if he ruffled the feathers of players, coaches, clubs, even an international, if somewhat ageing, rock star.

Walls questioned the integrity of West Coast’s 2006 the year after it happened, so concerned was he about the off-field issues of some players.

“At the start of 2007, I wrote a column for The Age and said the Eagles don’t deserve it, that the premiership is tainted because of their conduct,” he said.

“(Eagles chairman) Dalton Gooding contacted me, and said, ‘We strongly disagree … we feel slighted’.”

On Gooding’s request, he spent three days with the Eagles in 2007, interviewing more than 30 players, coaches and staff.

“I won’t name the person … but I walked into this person’s office and … and that person said you have got no idea what is going on here with the behaviour and drugs,” he said, a chat that further confirmed his suspicions.

Twelve years on, a candid Walls is as emphatic as ever that the 2006 flag is tainted.

“Absolutely,” he said. “You only have to look at the history of some of those players and what has happened to them. It is so sad.

“That’s what I felt at the time, and I think it has been proven as the years have gone on.”

The Eagles fans haven’t forgiven him, though. A few years ago, he was walking along the beach in Perth when a cyclist rode past him before doing an about turn.

“He recognised who I was, did a U-turn and came back and gave me a mouthful.”

Then there was Walls’ run-in with Meat Loaf, whose shambolic performance in the 2011 Grand Final hasn’t been forgotten.

“It was a wet day and there was a bit of lightning in the air,” said Walls, working with Channel 10 at the time.

“Evidentially, the big Loaf was worried about being struck on stage.”

“His manager came up and said ‘Meat Loaf is not going to go on stage, it’s too dangerous’. I said ‘That’s as weak as piss. Tell him to harden up and get out there’.”

Fired-up when he heard of Walls’ message, Meat Loaf bumbled through a set of barely recognisable songs which have now become a part of Grand Final folklore.

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