Footballers hit the surf as Mark Williams wades into the water and begins to reminisce.

Williams’ thoughts go back to Queensland beach days with his mate, the late Phil Walsh.

Catching waves, shooting the breeze, debating, dreaming big.

“If I went surfing – I’ve been surfing since with the Richmond boys and Melbourne boys – and you get in the water, you think of what fun we had and what fun we would be having,” Williams tells this masthead.

John Annear, a Collingwood and Richmond teammate, thinks of his old friend controlling the court with his four sons at family dinners with entertaining discussions.

It happens to Sam Jacobs, a Crows player under Walsh, if he hears the word ‘elite’.

For long-time West Coast chief executive Trevor Nisbett, it can take something as simple as watching players drop their standards to be reminded of his former colleague.

Fellow Brisbane Bears pioneer Mark Mickan can have fond recollections of Walsh when the Crows run onto the ground.

Gary Ayres’ mind sometimes turns to his first fitness boss as coach while recalling their stint at Geelong.

Gavan Bell finds himself reflecting on Walsh when he looks back on their time growing up together in country Victoria.

Such memories have permeated the footy community for the past decade.

Thursday, July 3 marks 10 years since Walsh died, aged 55.

His legacy continues today after stops at seven AFL and several community clubs across four states as a player, fitness boss, assistant and senior coach.

“Two events in my life had similar impacts,” says Williams, who was teammates with Walsh at Collingwood and Brisbane, then coached alongside him at Port Adelaide.

“When Mum rang up to say my twin brother (Anthony) had died from a roof falling on top of him (in 1988).

Annear finds it hard to believe it has been 10 years.

“I get these little reminders and you think about what could’ve been if Walshy was still around,” Annear, now 65, says.

“When you’re having a chat with your kids and one takes the opposite view so strongly, and you think ‘you’re so bloody wrong’, but then they put forward an argument that over time it almost starts becoming believable – that reminds me so much of our Tuesday night dinners with Walshy where he’d throw a grenade on the campfire.

“If there was any discussion – about footy, politics, music, extraterrestrial life – he’d take up the viewpoint that would take up the biggest banter of discussion that would last for an hour.

“He had a unique spirit, was a lot of fun and could talk to anyone at whatever level the conversation headed.”

Bell discovered that early.

Before Walsh played for Collingwood, Richmond and Brisbane Bears, was fitness co-ordinator at Geelong, an assistant at Port Adelaide (twice) and West Coast, and coached the Crows, he was teammates with Bell at Hamilton Kangaroos, in their hometown in western Victoria.

Both wingmen, they bonded over footy, water activities and taking the mickey out of each other.

“He was a ripper, Walshy,” Bell says.

“Sarcasm was one of his standout traits.

Williams and Annear knew little about Walsh – or his sharp tongue – when the speedy left-footer came to the VFL, joining them at Collingwood, ahead of the 1983 season.

The Hamilton product would feature in all 22 games, winning Collingwood’s best first-year player award and finishing third in its club champion count.

But he shocked the Magpies by leaving with Annear after one season – and a court battle – to the Tigers, who got payback on their rivals for poaching David Cloke and Geoff Raines.

Away from footy, music was a shared interest.

“We would go watch bands, including Paul Kelly when he was on the rise,” Annear says.

His housemate, Williams, adds: “Phil was into Midnight Oil before they were big and he could do a nice version of Peter Garrett with his dancing.”

Surfing came more into the picture when Walsh, Williams and Mickan started a new adventure with the inaugural Bears’ squad in 1987.

Walsh took up the hobby while studying teaching in Ballarat and saw it as a release from football.

He moved to Brisbane to re-establish himself after being on the outer at Richmond, where he played 40 matches in three injury-hampered seasons.

Mickan was the Bears’ first captain with Williams his deputy.

Bell was there too – in the koala mascot suit and as a development officer.

Walsh, who’d had five coaches in his first five seasons, won the club’s first best-and-fairest award.

“After being at Richmond, his attitude was ‘I’ll show you’,” Williams says.

The Bears won six, seven, eight and four games in their first four seasons.

Since merging with Fitzroy ahead of the 1997 campaign, Brisbane has snared four flags from six grand finals.

“I’m sure Phil, like us, would be very proud of where they are now because we took a big chance to go up there,” says Williams, who left the club in 1990, a year before Walsh retired.

They kept super fit by surfing “all the time” while at the Bears.

Sometimes the duo headed from the beach straight to training at Carrara – now Gold Coast’s base – and would shower beforehand to get the sand off.

“He was definitely the better surfer,” Williams says.

Those sessions helped set foundations for the Power’s maiden AFL premiership – coincidentally against Brisbane – in 2004.

“There’s times between the waves where you’d sit there and have a chat, and you’d dream of what might happen,” Williams says.

“We definitely said that if I ever got the chance to coach, I’d get him to work with me.

“As soon as I did, I rang him.”

Walsh was overseeing Geelong’s strength and conditioning program when Williams got the senior job at Port Adelaide and asked if he wanted to reunite at Alberton.

“It was like it was meant to be,” Williams says.

Walsh hung up the boots after 122 games across three clubs, only to return to the field at Modewarre in the Bellarine competition two years later.

In 1995, he joined the Cats under Ayres, who quickly found him to be an astute tactician, outstanding human being and a leader in the making.

“I’ve got no doubt he was fitter than some of the players at Geelong at the time, but I don’t want to incriminate anyone,” Ayres says with a laugh.

“He just understood the game, understood individuals and was able to build relationships.

“Phil would go OK against him.

“That’s what I mean by leading by example – some guys might not necessarily want to be involved.”

Annear could not envisage Walsh coaching during their younger days.

“He was almost anti-establishment,” he says.

“If you were told to wear black shoes, he’d wear white ones.”

Walsh eloping with his long-time love, Meredith, in Brisbane on a weekday afternoon, then training with the Bears later that evening was true to form.

He hated a fuss and revelled in being a nonconformist, according to Annear.

“But the longer he was in the football system, he realised he was an example that fellas followed so that changed over time.”

Williams says: “To this day, I’d kicked him in the bum about it (the midweek elopement), saying ‘what are you doing?’

“But Phil was a different cat and sees the world differently.

“This was a guy who learnt Japanese to a university standard on a train to Geelong.

“He wants to know different things, challenges people.

“He was very opinionated and if people came into a conversation, they might easily be turned off unless they knew Phil.

“I wouldn’t take his opinion, he wouldn’t take mine … we’d interact in a way of getting more understanding from a statement or point of view. Show me that, explain that, prove that.”

Williams poses a rhetorical question: “Who asks a fitness man to become a coach?”

“You need someone who understands you and has been through similar experiences as you,” he says.

“He was really smart and was also a big learner.

“He’d read lots of stuff, investigate lots of stuff.

“He was into American sport before anyone was and into English soccer.

“He’d always want to test me on what the home grounds of English soccer teams were.”

Walsh’s thirst for learning, a competitive streak ingrained from being the youngest of seven children and his football nous became major assets in Port’s premiership quest.

Overseas trips to other sporting organisations or for leadership courses and a groundbreaking influence on data analysis in football stand out years later.

The Power getting coding programs before other clubs gave Walsh a new toy to become a strategic mastermind.

Williams says Walsh focused on goal sources before anyone, including Champion Data.

“We had information so we could be ahead of the field,” he says.

“The smartest thing I could do was pick the brains of the great people I had in the room (as assistants): Phil, Alastair Clarkson, Dean Bailey, Geoff Morris and David Pittman.

“Phil had a great relationship with players and would put a carrot in front of their noses trying to get them to achieve things.”

The pact they made on the Queensland beach reached the ultimate fulfilment when – after three consecutive years of falling short in finals – the Power broke through to win the flag.

“He was blown away by it,” Williams says of Walsh, who received the AFL Coaches Association’s Assistant of the Year gong for 2004.

“We had chased this for a long time.

“To be able to get there and finally deliver under the pressure we were under, it was great relief.

“But we wouldn’t dwell on it.

“We were a driven sort of couple that thought ‘what’s the next thing? Let’s keep moving and find a better way’. And that was every day.”

Mickan, the self-described “third wheel” of the friendship in Brisbane, reunited with his Bears buddies as the Power’s part-time ruck coach in 2005, giving him an insight into Walsh’s coaching prowess.

“He was a real players’ man,” says Mickan, the Crows’ inaugural club champion in 1991 and a SANFL premiership mentor at West Adelaide in 2015.

“He’d built a reputation at Port as one of the greatest assistant coaches of all-time and it was easy to see why.

“Everyone thought he’d be an excellent senior coach, but he didn’t seem to want to become one at the time.”

Walsh took his next step towards doing so when he was lured to West Coast at the end of 2008.

Nisbett recalls Walsh bringing a “new vibrancy and enthusiasm” to the Eagles, as well as an infectious intensity.

“I remember him sitting in the grandstand on training days and if players did the wrong thing on the track, you could hear him yelling instructions,” Nisbett says.

Years after Walsh’s death, he would spring to Nisbett’s mind if the Eagles boss saw players lagging at training.

“I used to watch some and think ‘if Phil was around, he wouldn’t allow that’,” he says.

“When I was at West Coast, I used to wish we had more of his type.

“He could be brutal on the players at training or with other things, but then put his arm around them afterwards and say ‘the reason I said that is because of X, Y and Z’.

“A lot of it was tough love with Phil, but the players who worked under him embraced it.

“I think you saw the fruits of that when he took over as senior coach of Adelaide.”

Walsh “put himself on the map” with Crows players who only knew him from afar when he delivered a stirring eulogy at close friend Bailey’s funeral.

Bailey, an Adelaide assistant at the time, died of lung cancer in March 2014, aged 47.

Walsh spoke at the service “like it was off an autocue”, according to Jacobs, holding the room on his every word.

He had spent that year back with the Power in a Ken Hinkley-led coaches box, which included the Crows’ present-day mentor, Matthew Nicks.

Seven months after Bailey’s funeral, Adelaide appointed Walsh as Brenton Sanderson’s replacement.

It came to the surprise of Annear, who thought his mate seemed content being a drummer, rather than sought to be the frontman.

“He’d said a million times he wouldn’t do it (become a senior coach),” he says.

“I think it surprised a lot of people.”

But Walsh did not want to look back wondering what might have been.

His outlook on life had changed after getting hit by a bus while on holiday in Peru in October 2012, leaving him with a broken pelvis and collarbone and prompting him to stop drinking alcohol and become more active.

Jacobs, Adelaide’s first-choice ruckman and a leadership group member, quickly realised Walsh thought outside the box.

To properly introduce himself, Walsh drove Jacobs to West Beach Caravan Park to ensure no one involved in footy or media would be there.

“Walshy’s strength was his clarity – what he wanted from you, how he wanted you to play and he drove the standards from that,” says Jacobs, now senior coach at SANFL club Woodville-West Torrens.

“That’s something I’ve tried to take into my role now.

“If I hear someone say ‘elite’, I think of Walshy.

“We had him for nine months and you’d be amazed the impact he had on not only the playing group but the club.”

Walsh’s time at the Crows was cut short when he was killed by his son, Cy, six days after the team’s victory over Brisbane at the Gabba in round 13, 2015.

Cy was later found not guilty of murder due to mental incompetence.

Adelaide had a 7-5 win-loss record when Walsh died.

The club’s next game against Geelong was cancelled and awarded a draw.

Then the Crows faced – and lost to – the Eagles in Perth in an emotional return to the field, before a gutsy three-point win in a special Showdown.

Walsh’s last two clubs ran through one banner and the best-on-ground medal was named in his honour for that match, presented by his daughter, Quinn.

Adelaide, under interim coach Scott Camporeale, rallied to make the finals and win one.

“As a group, we’d just gone through Bails and then had to go through Walshy,” Jacobs says.

“When you go through tragedy – and I went through that with my brother (who died in 2017) – the best place to be is a footy club because you’ve got so much support around you.

“We were led absolutely fantastically by Tex (Taylor Walker). Campo, Danger (Patrick Dangerfield) and Sloaney (Rory Sloane) were brilliant too.”

Walsh appointing Walker captain – externally considered a left-field call – was part of his legacy as the key forward led the Crows to the 2017 grand final under new coach Don Pyke.

Jacobs reckons Walsh’s legacy includes taking preparation to a new level.

Williams nominates his insatiable pursuit of improvement.

“It was about being better than you are and finding new ways, and they might not be the traditional AFL path,” he says.

“It might be a different sport, a different technology, a different psychology – there might be something else out there, keep searching.”

Williams was a pallbearer at Walsh’s funeral, as well as a keynote speaker at his Adelaide Oval memorial via video link from Punt Rd.

His address included a clip from the 1979 surf classic Big Wednesday, a film “all about mateship”, and another from the 1960 blockbuster Spartacus.

In the latter scene, a rebellious slave cannot be singled out because the others claim to be Spartacus.

“Stand up for each other, have each other’s back …,” Williams says of it now.

Walsh did that during their coaching days together, never leaving Williams’ side in post-game presentations at Alberton Oval in a protective fashion.

“That’s just what mates do,” Williams says.

“That was terrific.”

Mickan sometimes thinks of Walsh when the Crows run out to play, wondering what may have been if he continued in the role.

Ayres reckons Walsh could have been one of the great senior coaches.

Williams says: “Who would know? He seemed to be pointing the Crows in the right direction, that’s for sure.”

Adelaide’s Best Team Man Award has been named for the fallen coach since 2015.

A Phil Walsh Memorial Scholarship, including a grant of $10,000, is given to an AFL coach each year to help them and follow Walsh’s example.

Behind Adelaide Oval’s famous scoreboard is a tree planted in his memory on the 12-month anniversary of his death with a plaque that has “To endure with strength”, written in both Japanese and English.

It provides fans with somewhere to remember him and also symbolises new growth, and a way forward.

The 10-year mark of his mate’s passing will only remind Williams of the happy times they had together.

He is now head of development at Melbourne, which takes on the Crows at Adelaide Oval this round.

Four of Walsh’s former teams face off: Brisbane and the Power, plus Geelong and Richmond.

Nisbett will get together with a group of West Coast off-field personnel on Thursday for a beer and share their Walsh memories.

Bell will do similar, on the other side of the country, near Laura, in far north Queensland, with ex-Collingwood players Ronnie Wearmouth and Ricky Barham.

Annear also plans to catch up with two mutual friends to reflect.

“We won’t make a big deal of it, Walshy would be embarrassed,” he says.

The 166-game former Magpie, Tiger and Eagle was heading to Indonesia on a surfing holiday when he learnt about his friend’s passing.

Three years ago, Annear received more perspective when he almost drowned at the Cocos Islands.

He had been surfing when he went headfirst into a reef then was unconscious for more than four minutes underwater, only to be dragged back to shore and revived.

First there, then again after flying overnight to Royal Perth Hospital.

“There’s lots of little reminders about how life can be very unpredictable,” he says.

“When you reflect on a close mate that’s no longer here, you realise how close you are to them and it reminds you to touch base with your mates.

“Those of us who had Walshy in our lives were so lucky.”