THERE'S PLENTY OF people who have played, coached then commented on AFL football with great success. There's very few, however, who have left the sort of mark not only on the game, but upon the people they've dealt with as profoundly as has Robert Walls.
Walls, 74, who died on Thursday after battling blood cancer for the past two years, is the perfect example of a legacy that isn't reflected merely in words and numbers. Not that they're not impressive enough in their own right.
As a player with Carlton and Fitzroy in 259 games and in three premierships, he's a member of the Australian football Hall of Fame. He coached four different clubs across two decades and just on 350 games, leading the Blues to the 1987 flag. And as a media commentator and writer for another 20-plus years, Walls was blunt, direct, always engaging.
But even that summary sells incredibly short the sort of contribution, achievements and difficulties dealt with in each of those three distinct arenas.
Take Walls the player, a lean and wiry centre half-forward whose athleticism, marking and goalkicking ability was silky, and in many ways, also ahead of its time.
Watch two of the most famous Grand Finals played, Carlton's 1970 comeback from 44 points down against Collingwood, and the Blues' record score demolition of hot favourite Richmond in 1972.
In the first, it's Walls as pivotal as any player in the Blues' amazing third-quarter burst of seven goals in just 13 minutes. He's kicking goals, creating goals, embracing coach Ron Barassi's instruction to play on at all costs with fervour.
In the 1972 avalanche, Walls is like a panther stalking the half-forward line, seemingly in several places at once as he destroys the Tigers' defence with six goals. Individual games don't come any better than that one. But big performances on the biggest stages were a Walls trademark.
Walls the coach? His 347 games in charge of Fitzroy, Carlton, Brisbane Bears and Richmond puts him in the all-time top 20. He coached the Blues to the 1987 flag over Hawthorn with a team not nearly as talented pound-for-pound as other Carlton premiership outfits.
But he'll be remembered just as much for one of the most ingenious tactical innovations of the far more conservative days of VFL football when he coached Fitzroy.
The "huddle", Walls's tactic of having his players group at centre half-back at kick-ins then breaking to all corners with valuable metres on their opponents, was for its time, revolutionary, helping push his coaching counterparts into searching for an antidote, then their own tactical advantages.
And at cash-strapped Fitzroy from 1981-85, Walls regularly had to make the best out of not much. Indeed, most of his coaching career was spent working despite considerable obstacles, be they lack of resources, talent or even a harmonious environment.
There were five seasons with a Brisbane Bears outfit stuck on the Gold Coast with spartan facilities, stuck with eccentric and erratic ownership and administration, and a club used as a dumping ground for rivals' broken-down or unwanted cast-offs with seemingly little concern from the AFL.
Finally, there was a two-season stint at Richmond at a time when those at Punt Road were still counting every penny and still had a penchant for internal bickering and power plays. It's a wonder Walls ever found time to concentrate simply on the business of coaching.
That was the foundation of arguably Walls's most memorable moment in the third stage of his football life, the media pundit, when he famously went head-to-head with Essendon coach and long-time adversary and sparring partner Kevin Sheedy on "Talking Footy" in 2001. It was a fascinating debate in which Walls more than held his own.
As he did whenever players or coaches took umbrage with his commentary about their performances. He did so from a position of strength, because while he could be brutal in his criticism, it would never be delivered without fact or foundation, and with fairness.
Even to colleagues. I worked with Wallsy on The Age and at 3AW for a long time, and for a few years on Optus Vision's old pay-TV program "Football Feedback".
A couple of times during that journey, he quietly pulled me aside, looked me in the eye and in essence gave me a "coach's spray" for getting ahead of myself. He wasn't wrong, either. Most importantly, though, I knew he was doing so because he genuinely wanted me to do well.
He had his quirks, Rob, even as a media man. He loathed any suggestion of pretence, even something seemingly as innocent as players wearing sunglasses whilst out on the ground having a pre-game stroll. In that sense, he was decidedly old school.
It didn't get more old school than the infamous tale from his Brisbane coaching days, when the wayward Shane Strempel was made to box up to eight Bears teammates in an attempt to teach him respect.
That, however, was a different era. And the Walls I knew, a fiercely intelligent man with a strong sense of right and wrong, had enough sensitivity in his reading of character to make any adjustment necessary to suit the times. And in any era, he remained resolutely genuine, straight down the line, whether you liked what he had to say or not.
That's just one reason so many of his former charges stayed so closely-connected to him, most strikingly the tight band of Fitzroy players who on the smell of an oily rag twice came close enough to winning flags under the then-still inexperienced coach fresh out of his playing days.
So many have made successes of their careers beyond the football field. AFL senior coaches like Paul Roos, Ross Lyon, Grant Thomas, Ron Alexander. AFL assistant coaches like John Blakey and Brad Gotch, or coaches at junior or amateur level like Peter Francis, Leon Harris and Leigh Carlson.
Two more Walls disciples, Scott Clayton and the late Matt Rendell, were among AFL football's most successful recruiters. Michael Nettlefold and Gary Pert were AFL club chief executives. Mick Conlan was a one-time chief executive of Queensland football. Another couple in Laurie Serafini and the late Ross Thornton served successfully on the Brisbane Lions' board.
Garry Wilson was a successful entrepreneur. Two more favourites in Bernie Quinlan and Richard Osborne were highly-visible faces in the football media via Channel Seven, and Alastair Lynch, who played his first two years in Brisbane under Walls, still is on Fox Footy.
And that whole band was just from one club. Now multiply that number by the three other clubs he coached, the media organisations for whom he worked, the tribe of children and grandchildren to whom he was so devoted, his huge circle of friends both here and in France, where he spent much time later in life.
Or indeed anyone fortunate enough to have crossed his path even briefly. Robert Walls was a great player, a great coach and a great commentator. But most importantly, he was a great human.