THE MCG GAVE the late Robert Walls everything the great Australian game could possibly give – and so it was that the ’G served as the magnificent backdrop for a memorial to Walls, the three-time Carlton Premiership player and Premiership Coach who truly gave back in a League football life spanning six decades.
Hundreds of people, many connected with the AFL, the clubs and the media fraternity, joined members of the Walls family at the service which was held in the MCC Members Dining Room flanking the great ground.
Heartfelt personal tributes to Walls the family man were paid by his sister Annette Coonan and children Rebecca, David and Daniel Walls, with Stephen Gough, Scott Clayton, Michael McLean and David Barham equally emotional in their homages to Walls the player, coach and media commentator.
Gough, the former Carlton Chief Executive who capably officiated as Master of Ceremonies at the memorial, acknowledged Walls’s greatest individual and collective successes as a three-time Premiership player and Premiership Coach who with Jacana’s local boy Bruce Doull first fronted at Princes Park to try his luck with the Under 19s back in 1966.
Gough spoke of Walls’ meteoric rise from Coburg Amateurs to Carlton’s Unders, reserves and finally seniors – breaking through as a 16 year-old in the second round of ’67 in the same match Peter Hudson first turned out for Hawthorn.
“In ’68, under Ron Barassi whom Robert idolised, he played in his first Premiership against Essendon as an 18 year-old. He was in the back pocket and was to change with Serge Silvagni,” Gough said.
“He (Walls) told me ‘I changed just once, I had a three-minute run, then Serge came back, looked at me and said: ‘Son, this is a man’s job, leave it to me’ - and back to the back pocket Robert went.”
Walls’ 12 seasons as a Carlton player yielded 218 games for 367 goals and the lauded Grand Finals of 1970 and ’72 in which he starred, and as Gough reminded: “He’d been part of three flags as a player and five Grand Finals by the age of 23”.
Walls was equally inspired with Barassi’s successor John Nicholls, when ‘Big Nick’ took the helm in ’72 as Captain-Coach – and he responded accordingly when it came to the crunch.
“Robert said that in those days the critical test of a player came in those games against Richmond and Collingwood, and to win that test as any great player or any ordinary player you needed a real toughness and a streak of steel if you were going to survive, ” Gough said.
“Robert certainly had those traits.”
Walls was part of a three-pronged attack Nicholls had identified for the 1972 Grand Final. The plan was for Nicholls to start in a forward pocket alongside Alex Jesaulenko, with Walls tying down centre half-forward and Peter Jones rucking for the entire contest.
The plan worked to perfection. Nicholls, Jesaulenko and Walls contributed 19 of Carlton’s 28 goals in that triumph, Jones turned in his greatest performance in the ruck, and the final scoreline of 28.9 remains a Grand Final record after more than 50 years.
By the time his playing days at Princes Park were done, and notwithstanding the three Premiership baubles, Walls had captained Carlton and twice won its goalkicking honours. But another challenge beckoned on his return to Carlton as Senior Coach.
“When ‘Wallsy’ was appointed Coach in 1986 we at Carlton were really keen to know how his Fitzroy kick-in strategy worked, because it bamboozled us many times in the box when we played Fitzroy,” Gough recalled.
“This innovation that ‘Wallsy’ created was used to great effect by Carlton.”
Of the 1987 Premiership and Coach Walls’ part in it, Gough recounted the man’s courage of conviction in pairing Hawthorn’s great centre half-forward Dermott Brereton with David Rhys-Jones, a bona fide winger, for the Blues’ tilt at their 15th flag.
“To Robert’s credit he stuck to his guns at match committee after the Chairman Wes Lofts nearly chocked when the match-ups appeared on the board,” Gough said. “Two days later, to Wes’s credit, he knew he had to support the Coach . . . and history tells us the move worked remarkably well.”
Robert Vernon Walls was and is, as Gough said, “deservedly Carlton royalty”. As a member of the Team of the Century and Legend of the Hall of Fame, his place in Club history is assured.
But there was another side of Walls that Gough also saw first-hand as his dear friend bravely confronted his mortality.
“When coaching, Robert often used the word ‘bold’. He liked people to be bold in the way they played and to play bold football as a team. It was a recurring theme,” Gough said.
“Having met with him over recent weeks, it was the Robert Walls we all know with those characteristics in determining the way he approached life. He was stoic, yet with a matter-of-fact-type acknowledgment and acceptance of what was tragically confronting him. He was a very brave man.”
The Carlton Football Club was represented at the memorial by the greats of its illustrious history, many of them part of Walls’s Grand Final successes as both player and coach – amongst them Ian Aitken, Tom Alvin, Bill Bennett, Ian Collins, Peter Dean, Richard Dennis (who had jetted in from Perth), Bruce Doull, Mike Fitzpatrick, David Glascott, Adrian Gleeson, Syd Jackson, Peter Jones, Trevor Keogh, Andy Lukas, Mark Maclure, Phillip Pinnell, Stephen Kernahan, Justin Madden, David Rhys-Jones, Shane Robertson, Stephen Silvagni and Geoff Southby.
Also in attendance was the three-time Carlton Premiership Coach David Parkin, together with the Club’s current CEO Brian Cook, Senior Coach Michael Voss and Director of Football Brad Lloyd.
