THE BEST player on the ground in the Round 9 clash between Brisbane and Carlton will be awarded the Robert Walls Medal.
As a mark of respect to the man who contributed so much to both football clubs, it will be the second time the Medal has been awarded, approaching the one-year anniversary of Walls’ passing on 15 May 2025.
It was in 2011 when Walls was elevated to Legend status in the Carlton Hall of Fame, while it was just last week that he received the same status at the Brisbane Lions.
The Robert Walls Medal serves to perpetuate the memory of a giant of the game, who made key contributions to football as a player, coach and media personality.
Born in the Central Victorian goldfields town of Dunolly, but raised in the inner-city northern suburb of Brunswick, Walls was residentially tied to Carlton through its metropolitan zone and in the summer of 1966, on the strength of some creditable performances for Coburg Amateurs, the tall, gangly 15 year-old accepted an invitation to train and peddled his pushbike to Princes Park.
At Carlton, Walls was part of the drought-breaking Grand Final victory over Essendon in 1968, the incredible come-from-behind Grand Final triumph over Collingwood in 1970, and the winning Grand Final shootout with Richmond in 1972. He would represent Carlton in the old dark Navy Blues in 218 matches through 12 seasons to 1978 – during which time he would lead the team as captain and twice earn the club’s goalkicking honours - and later round out his on-field career with Fitzroy in 41 matches through three seasons until the end of 1980.
Walls was 27 and in his prime as a senior League footballer at the time he requested a change of scenery. He significantly contributed to the Lions’s fortunes in those ensuing 41 matches, pairing with Bernie Quinlan in their front half – and when a chronic knee condition put paid to his on-field career he accepted the role of coach. As an acknowledged coaching innovator (he famously concocted the dispersing player huddle to transition the ball quickly from the kick-in), Walls commandeered Fitzroy to the finals in three of his five years at the helm. In that time Walls mentored the likes of Paul Roos, Gary Pert, Scott Clayton and Richard Osborne, all of whom accredit Walls for positively impacting on them as both players and people.
In late 1985, Walls returned to Princes Park as Senior Coach, in a swap which saw Carlton coach David Parkin replace him in the role at Fitzroy – just as the Blues completed a recruiting coup with the signings of Craig Bradley, Jon Dorotich, Peter Motley and Stephen Kernahan.
As Carlton coach, Walls commandeered Kernahan and his players to Carlton’s penultimate premiership, when they prevailed in the heat against Hawthorn on Grand Final day 1987 – and his courage of conviction in assigning David Rhys-Jones with the match-winning task of negating Dermott Brereton was widely lauded.
In 1991, Walls committed to the development of the game in the nation’s north, when he replaced Norm Dare as Senior Coach of the then Brisbane Bears. Under Walls’ watch, Brisbane would accrue just 30 wins and a draw from 109 outings, but Walls’s last game in charge coincided with Brisbane’s first final, ironically the 1995 eliminator involving the eventual Premiers Carlton – and the on-field juggernaut Brisbane later became is chiefly accredited to his early influence.
