Robert Walls
Encyclopedia
Robert Walls is a former Australian rules football
er and coach who now works primarily as a television commentator and newspaper columnist on the sport. On 22 June 2006 he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame
.
and made his senior VFL debut with them as a tall, skinny 16-year-old on 22 April 1967 against Hawthorn
at Princes Park
. He gave a sign of things to come when he scored a goal with his first kick. Walls would go on to play in three premierships with Carlton – in 1968, 1970 and 1972. He was judged Man of the Match in the 1972 VFL Grand Final
when he kicked six goals against arch-rivals Richmond
in a masterful display. He played 218 games and scored 367 goals for Carlton before obtaining a clearance to Fitzroy
midway through the 1978 season.
They improved from last in 1980 to fifth at the end of the home-and-away season in 1981, securing their finals berth with an upset win over Collingwood
and then beating Essendon
in the Elimination Final before failing by the narrowest of margins in the First Semi against the Magpies. 1982 was relatively disappointing due to a poor start, but with players like Gary Pert
and Paul Roos
from the club's recruiting zones and South Australian recruit Matt Rendell
growing into stars, the Lions were back as a force at the end of the season. 1983 saw the Lions emerge after five rounds as favourites for the premiership and maintain that favouritism with a sensational win in a top-of-the-table clash with North
by 150 points with Rendell kicking eight goals besides destroying Gary Dempsey
in the ruck. However, inevitable overconfidence saw the Lions lose form and finish fourth after losing two hard-fought finals.
1984, with injuries plaguing the club and its lack of depth apparent, was initially disappointing but a remarkable recovery saw them enter the five after the final round only to be crushed by Collingwood. In 1985, the Lions' financial crisis emerged to threaten their future and this, along with more injuries, caused them to drop to ninth with only seven wins and two losses to wooden spooners St. Kilda. After this, Walls moved to his former club Carlton in a swap with Parkin.
at the start of the 1986 season in a direct swap with David Parkin
. Thanks in part to an influx of interstate recruits including Stephen Kernahan
, Craig Bradley
and Peter Motley
, he had immediate success, taking the side to a Grand Final in 1986 and a premiership in 1987.
The Blues made the finals again in 1988 but by mid-1989 they were struggling and Walls was sacked after the team lost a home match to the lowly Brisbane Bears
.
from 1991–1995.
It was revealed in the video "Passion To Play" that in Walls first year as Bears coach in 1991, as disciplinary action Walls authorised his players to don boxing gloves and beat 21 year old teammate Shane Strempel
repetitively in the head until he was severely bashed and bloodied after which Strempel quit playing football. Walls' coaching style was criticized about the incident by Kevin Sheedy who has several times questioned his credibility as a football coach.
In his last season, 1995, he had been told after Round 15 that with 4 wins and 11 losses for the season, he would not be re-appointed for 1996. But a major turning point in the season for the Bears soon came. In Round 16, against Hawthorn
, Brisbane trailed by 45 points at 3-quarter time and ended up winning by 7, which remains a VFL/AFL record for the biggest 3-quarter time deficit turned into a win.
From there, the Bears continued their run and won 6 of their next 7 games. They found themselves in eighth position, and qualifying for the finals, after being second-last just 7 weeks earlier. They faced Carlton, the top ranked side in week one of the finals, and went down by just 13 points, a monumental achievement considering Carlton won the next two weeks by more than 10 goals to claim the premiership. Despite this turnaround, a change of heart was not considered, and Walls moved to Richmond
the following year to coach.
in Round 17, 1997.
in Melbourne (a role he continues to fill), and joined the Seven Network
providing special comments during AFL
matches. Later he replaced Malcolm Blight
on the football discussion show Talking Footy
.
When Seven lost the broadcast rights for AFL matches at the end of 2001, Walls was recruited by both Network Ten
and the now defunct AFL-dedicated Fox Footy
pay television channel. He continues to work for the Ten network, providing special comments during match broadcasts, and with Steven Quartermain
co-hosting the new football discussion show One Week at a Time
. He is also is a radio commentator on 3AW
.
Walls was involved in a feud with Sydney Swans
coach Paul Roos
, after Walls stated that "the Swans can't possibly win the AFL Premiership with Paul Roos' style of coaching". In particular, Walls was on Network Ten
's commentary team when the Swans suffered a 43-point pasting from , after which the commentary team were critical of Sydney's overall performance in that match. This was the turning point in Sydney's season, and ultimately they went on to win the flag after which Roos refused to accept Walls' apology.
From 2012, Walls will leave 3AW
and provide Special Comments for rival SEN
as well as appearing on its Crunch Time Saturday AFL preview program.
. His wife Erin, suffering from cancer, attended the dinner in one of her last public appearances before passing away on 9 July 2006.
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
er and coach who now works primarily as a television commentator and newspaper columnist on the sport. On 22 June 2006 he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame
Australian Football Hall of Fame
The Australian Football Hall of Fame was established in 1996, the Centenary year of the Australian Football League, to help recognise the contributions made to the sport of Australian rules football by players, umpires, media personalities, coaches and administrators. It was initially established...
.
Carlton
Walls attended Coburg High School and was used in a variety of roles. He was recruited from Coburg Amateurs by the Carlton Football ClubCarlton Football Club
The Carlton Football Club is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club competes in the Australian Football League, and was one of the eight founding members of that competition in 1897...
and made his senior VFL debut with them as a tall, skinny 16-year-old on 22 April 1967 against Hawthorn
Hawthorn Football Club
The Hawthorn Football Club, nicknamed the Hawks, is a professional Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League . The club, founded in 1902, is the youngest of the Victorian-based teams in the AFL. The team play in Brown & Gold vertically striped guernseys...
at Princes Park
MC Labour Park
Princes Park is an Australian rules football ground located at Princes Park in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton North, Victoria....
. He gave a sign of things to come when he scored a goal with his first kick. Walls would go on to play in three premierships with Carlton – in 1968, 1970 and 1972. He was judged Man of the Match in the 1972 VFL Grand Final
1972 VFL Grand Final
The 1972 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Carlton Football Club and Richmond Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 7 October 1972. It was the 76th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine the...
when he kicked six goals against arch-rivals Richmond
Richmond Football Club
The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed The Tigers, is an Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League. Richmond shares healthy rivalries with Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon. After winning five premierships between 1967 and 1980, the club hit the depths in 1990,...
in a masterful display. He played 218 games and scored 367 goals for Carlton before obtaining a clearance to Fitzroy
Fitzroy Football Club
The Fitzroy Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Lions, is an Australian rules football club formed in 1883 to represent the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria and was a foundation member club of the Victorian Football League on its inception in 1897...
midway through the 1978 season.
Fitzroy
Walls played 41 games at number 9 for the Fitzroy Lions, playing in a winning team in 18 of those games, while losing the other 23. During his time with the Lions, he kicked 77 goals, and was a key part of the team from 1978-1980. He was the 956th player to represent Fitzroy. His Fitzroy debut came in round 9 of the 1978 season, where he kicked 2 goals in a losing effort against Footscray. He went on to play 14 games, kicking 24 goals, in his first season at Fitzroy. He was only able to achieve one more game in the following season, while kicking 30 goals, and in his final season with Fitzroy as a player, in 1980, he played in only 12 games, kicking 23 goals, before retiring at the end of that season.Fitzroy
After he retired as a player, Walls immediately took over as coach of Fitzroy. With a major clean-out of older players who were clearly "past it" in the club's disappointing 1980 season, Walls lifted the Lions to their best era since winning a premiership in 1944.They improved from last in 1980 to fifth at the end of the home-and-away season in 1981, securing their finals berth with an upset win over Collingwood
Collingwood Football Club
The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed The Magpies, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...
and then beating Essendon
Essendon Football Club
The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...
in the Elimination Final before failing by the narrowest of margins in the First Semi against the Magpies. 1982 was relatively disappointing due to a poor start, but with players like Gary Pert
Gary Pert
Gary Pert is a former Australian rules footballer in the VFL/AFL and businessman. Gary is the son of Brian Pert.-Fitzroy career:Pert was recruited from Bulleen to Fitzroy and made his debut for the Fitzroy Football Club in 1982...
and Paul Roos
Paul Roos (Australian rules footballer)
Paul Roos is a former Australian rules football player and coach in the VFL and Australian Football League.Playing the majority of his career with Fitzroy, Roos was one of the teams greats, captaining the side for a long time and was acknowledged as its best player for several seasons, being named...
from the club's recruiting zones and South Australian recruit Matt Rendell
Matt Rendell
Matthew Rendell is a South Australian born Australian rules footballer who played in the Australian Football League and South Australian National Football League ....
growing into stars, the Lions were back as a force at the end of the season. 1983 saw the Lions emerge after five rounds as favourites for the premiership and maintain that favouritism with a sensational win in a top-of-the-table clash with North
North Melbourne Football Club
The North Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed The Kangaroos, is the fourth oldest Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League and is one of the oldest sporting clubs in Australia and the world...
by 150 points with Rendell kicking eight goals besides destroying Gary Dempsey
Gary Dempsey
Gary Dempsey is a former Australian rules footballer who played for Footscray and North Melbourne in the Victorian Football League....
in the ruck. However, inevitable overconfidence saw the Lions lose form and finish fourth after losing two hard-fought finals.
1984, with injuries plaguing the club and its lack of depth apparent, was initially disappointing but a remarkable recovery saw them enter the five after the final round only to be crushed by Collingwood. In 1985, the Lions' financial crisis emerged to threaten their future and this, along with more injuries, caused them to drop to ninth with only seven wins and two losses to wooden spooners St. Kilda. After this, Walls moved to his former club Carlton in a swap with Parkin.
Carlton
Walls joined Carlton from FitzroyFitzroy Football Club
The Fitzroy Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Lions, is an Australian rules football club formed in 1883 to represent the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria and was a foundation member club of the Victorian Football League on its inception in 1897...
at the start of the 1986 season in a direct swap with David Parkin
David Parkin
David Parkin is a former Australian rules footballer and four-time premiership coach.- Pre-football career :He attended Melbourne High School and during his time there, was the school vice-captain and captain of football....
. Thanks in part to an influx of interstate recruits including Stephen Kernahan
Stephen Kernahan
Stephen Scott Kernahan is a former Australian rules footballer best known for his career with the Carlton Football Club of the Australian Football League and the Glenelg Football Club of the SANFL from 1981 until 1997...
, Craig Bradley
Craig Bradley
Craig Edwin "Braddles" Bradley is a former South Australian Australian rules footballer and first class cricketer. He is currently a part-time assistant coach at the Carlton Football Club, the club he represented 375 times in the VFL/AFL....
and Peter Motley
Peter Motley
Peter Motley is a former professional Australian rules footballer, playing for Sturt Football Club in the South Australian National Football League and Carlton Football Club in the Victorian Football League....
, he had immediate success, taking the side to a Grand Final in 1986 and a premiership in 1987.
The Blues made the finals again in 1988 but by mid-1989 they were struggling and Walls was sacked after the team lost a home match to the lowly Brisbane Bears
Brisbane Bears
The Brisbane Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Bears was an Australian rules football club and the first Queensland-based club in the Victorian Football League . The club played its first match in 1987, but struggled on and off the field until it made the finals for the first time in 1995...
.
Brisbane Bears
Walls coached the Brisbane BearsBrisbane Bears
The Brisbane Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Bears was an Australian rules football club and the first Queensland-based club in the Victorian Football League . The club played its first match in 1987, but struggled on and off the field until it made the finals for the first time in 1995...
from 1991–1995.
It was revealed in the video "Passion To Play" that in Walls first year as Bears coach in 1991, as disciplinary action Walls authorised his players to don boxing gloves and beat 21 year old teammate Shane Strempel
Shane Strempel
Shane Strempel is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Brisbane Bears in the Australian Football League .-Career:...
repetitively in the head until he was severely bashed and bloodied after which Strempel quit playing football. Walls' coaching style was criticized about the incident by Kevin Sheedy who has several times questioned his credibility as a football coach.
In his last season, 1995, he had been told after Round 15 that with 4 wins and 11 losses for the season, he would not be re-appointed for 1996. But a major turning point in the season for the Bears soon came. In Round 16, against Hawthorn
Hawthorn Football Club
The Hawthorn Football Club, nicknamed the Hawks, is a professional Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League . The club, founded in 1902, is the youngest of the Victorian-based teams in the AFL. The team play in Brown & Gold vertically striped guernseys...
, Brisbane trailed by 45 points at 3-quarter time and ended up winning by 7, which remains a VFL/AFL record for the biggest 3-quarter time deficit turned into a win.
From there, the Bears continued their run and won 6 of their next 7 games. They found themselves in eighth position, and qualifying for the finals, after being second-last just 7 weeks earlier. They faced Carlton, the top ranked side in week one of the finals, and went down by just 13 points, a monumental achievement considering Carlton won the next two weeks by more than 10 goals to claim the premiership. Despite this turnaround, a change of heart was not considered, and Walls moved to Richmond
Richmond Football Club
The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed The Tigers, is an Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League. Richmond shares healthy rivalries with Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon. After winning five premierships between 1967 and 1980, the club hit the depths in 1990,...
the following year to coach.
Richmond
The Richmond Football Club appointed Walls as senior coach for the 1996 season. He was sacked after a 137 point defeat by the Adelaide CrowsAdelaide Crows
The Adelaide Football Club, nicknamed The Crows, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Adelaide, South Australia, playing in the Australian Football League ....
in Round 17, 1997.
Media
At the end of his coaching career, Walls was immediately in demand as a football commentator. He became a columnist for The AgeThe Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
in Melbourne (a role he continues to fill), and joined the Seven Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
providing special comments during AFL
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...
matches. Later he replaced Malcolm Blight
Malcolm Blight
Malcolm Jack Blight AM is a former champion Australian rules football player and coach, and current television commentator. During the 1970s and 1980s Blight played for the Woodville Football Club in the South Australian National Football League and the North Melbourne Football Club in the...
on the football discussion show Talking Footy
Talking Footy
Talking Footy was an Australian rules football chat show appearing on the Seven Network.It appeared on TV from 1994 until 2002. The show was hosted by Bruce McAvaney in the 1990s, and included guests Mike Sheahan, Malcolm Blight and Leigh Matthews as regulars. It was screened on Monday nights at...
.
When Seven lost the broadcast rights for AFL matches at the end of 2001, Walls was recruited by both Network Ten
Network Ten
Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...
and the now defunct AFL-dedicated Fox Footy
Fox Footy
Fox Footy is an upcoming Australian Rules football subscription television channel dedicated to screening Australian rules football matches and related programming. It will be owned by Premier Media Group, operated out of their Melbourne based studios and available on Foxtel, Austar and Optus...
pay television channel. He continues to work for the Ten network, providing special comments during match broadcasts, and with Steven Quartermain
Steven Quartermain
Stephen William Quartermain is an Australian television personality and sports journalist.-Early career:Quartermain began his television career in 1982 with the ABC after working as cadet reporter with Leader newspapers in 1980....
co-hosting the new football discussion show One Week at a Time
One Week at a Time
One Week at a Time can refer to one of the following television shows:*One Week at a Time , a sports analysis show centred around Australian rules football first screened in 2009 till 2011...
. He is also is a radio commentator on 3AW
3AW
3AW is a talkback radio station in Melbourne, Australia on 693 kHz AM. It began transmission on 22 February 1932 as Melbourne's fifth commercial radio station.-History:...
.
Walls was involved in a feud with Sydney Swans
Sydney Swans
The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...
coach Paul Roos
Paul Roos (Australian rules footballer)
Paul Roos is a former Australian rules football player and coach in the VFL and Australian Football League.Playing the majority of his career with Fitzroy, Roos was one of the teams greats, captaining the side for a long time and was acknowledged as its best player for several seasons, being named...
, after Walls stated that "the Swans can't possibly win the AFL Premiership with Paul Roos' style of coaching". In particular, Walls was on Network Ten
Network Ten
Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...
's commentary team when the Swans suffered a 43-point pasting from , after which the commentary team were critical of Sydney's overall performance in that match. This was the turning point in Sydney's season, and ultimately they went on to win the flag after which Roos refused to accept Walls' apology.
From 2012, Walls will leave 3AW
3AW
3AW is a talkback radio station in Melbourne, Australia on 693 kHz AM. It began transmission on 22 February 1932 as Melbourne's fifth commercial radio station.-History:...
and provide Special Comments for rival SEN
SEN
SEN is a three-letter abbreviation which may stand for:* SEN 1116, sports radio station in Melbourne, Australia* Senator, as a special status with an airline* Small extension node* Software Engineering Notes* London Southend Airport, IATA airport code...
as well as appearing on its Crunch Time Saturday AFL preview program.
Honours
In 2006, Walls was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of FameAustralian Football Hall of Fame
The Australian Football Hall of Fame was established in 1996, the Centenary year of the Australian Football League, to help recognise the contributions made to the sport of Australian rules football by players, umpires, media personalities, coaches and administrators. It was initially established...
. His wife Erin, suffering from cancer, attended the dinner in one of her last public appearances before passing away on 9 July 2006.