Adelaide champion Taylor Walker ended his decorated career in September as an all Australian and former club captain who kicked 715 goals in 319 games.
Foxfooty.com.au has been granted exclusive excerpts from his autobiography TEX – A TAYLOR MADE STORY which is published by Harper Collins and is on sale from Tuesday, November 10.
Watch every ball of Australia vs England T20 & ODI series Live & ad-break free during play on Fox Cricket, available on Kayo Sports | Don’t miss the Summer of the Century. Get 50% off Kayo Premium for 4 months. Min cost $23 for 1 month. New & returning customers only. Offer ends 30 Nov 2026. Sign up today.
WHY KICKING GOALS WAS NEVER ENOUGH – LESSONS FROM NEIL CRAIG
WHAT’S GAMBLING REALLY COSTING YOU? Set a deposit limit. For Free and confidential support call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au.
Walker spent the entirety of the first season in Adelaide playing in the SANFL
I never had any great expectations when I first arrived at Adelaide.
Unlike a lot of kids who get drafted and want to play straight away, I knew where I sat in the pecking order and was up against the likes of Kurt Tippett, Ken McGregor and Trent Hentschel for a key forward spot, so I wasn’t in a rush. And anyhow, I was kicking bags of five and six goals at Norwood most weeks thinking, ‘How good’s this?’.
But gradually as my form improved I must have started to believe some of the hype, because towards the end of the 2008 season I desperately wanted to make my AFL debut, and the longer the selectors made me wait, the more I started to play with a bit of an ‘up yours’ attitude.
Craigy must have sensed it too because he brought me back to earth one day after training. He sat me down at the club and said, ‘Taylor, you’re not playing. I don’t care how many goals you kick, you don’t show any form of defensive pressure.’
In my early years, Craigy would hold us to account every week by calculating the number of ‘pressure points’ each player had to achieve in their weekend game. Things like your ability to stand the mark, force the opposition to the strong side of the defence, win a contest ahead of the ball, tackles and so on. So every Monday, regardless of whether you’d played AFL or SANFL, you’d come in for the team meeting and the pressure points leaderboard would be up on the screen for everyone to see. I was at the bottom 99 per cent of the time.
But that was Craigy’s way of coaching. Clear and direct. No arguments. That’s not to say I always agreed with him. We had our moments for sure.
The captain’s call
New coach Phil Walsh had been at the Crows for a few months when he called Walker in for a chat In mid-December 2014 we’d just finished training when out of the blue, Walshy approached me. ‘We should catch up for a coffee,’ he said. ‘I want to speak to you about leadership.’
‘Yeah, no worries,’ I replied, not thinking much of it.
The next day we met at a little cafe around the corner from the footy club. We ordered coffees and then the questions started.
Walker ran through a number of teammates regarding who he thought should be captain when Walsh interrupted.
‘Yep. I want you to be captain,’ Walshy said. ‘You say it how it is.’ In his view, when I led, others followed me.
I was so stuck for words that I panicked. ‘No, I don’t think so, mate, I don’t think I can,’ I said at last. I’d never captained a team in my life. Here I was playing for the club that I’d grown up barracking for, and now Phil Walsh wanted me to be its captain.
The thought was overwhelming.
I can’t remember much more of the conversation because my mind was in overdrive. By the time we walked out of the cafe, I had basically told him, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ I got in the car and rang Ellie to tell her what had just happened.
Her response was immediate: ‘You’re an absolute idiot! What do you mean you’re not even going to think about it?’
Then I rang my brother, then Dale Tonkin, one of my mentors in Broken Hill, and then Mum. They all said the same thing: ‘You’re being stupid – why would you not even think about it?’
As apprehensive as I was, hearing these reactions from people I trusted got my mind ticking over, and that night I could barely sleep. The next morning, having decided I should at least consider his offer, I went into Walshy’s office and asked if I could have the Christmas break to think about it. He agreed. I went back to Broken Hill and talked more with Mum, Dad and Ayrton.
One night I was on the piss with my mates, and I just threw it out there. ‘What do ya reckon, boys? Walshy has hit me up to be captain and I don’t think I can do it.’
They said the same thing as everyone else – only a bit more directly: ‘You’re a fucking idiot! Clearly he’s asked you to do it because he’s seen something in you. Why wouldn’t you do it?’
That was all I needed to hear, and I did a backflip when we came back to the club in January.
AFLW finals launched in Melbourne | 02:04
THE WORST PHONE CALL OF MY LIFE
Walker and his future wife Ellie had attended Cirque du Soleil with friends and he was asleep when the phone rang on July 4, 2015 at 4am in the morning.
With one eye open I looked at the name on the screen and saw ‘Andrew Fagan’ – our CEO. It was just after 4 am and I thought, ‘I’m not answering that.’
Maybe he’s pocket-dialled me. It stopped ringing and I closed my eyes again. But three seconds later, it started ringing again.
‘Ah, fuck, something is up here,’ I thought. So I reached across and answered the phone, still half-asleep.
‘Mate,’ Fages said, ‘I’ve got some bad news … Phil has been murdered.’
For the next 30 seconds, I felt like time stood still. Fages was thin on detail but said, ‘I need you to round up a few of the boys. We’re going to meet at the footy club as soon as we can.’
I rang Ellie straightaway, shaking like a bloody tree, and she said she would come over immediately.
Then I thought I’d better tell Crouchy. There was no easy way to do it, so I walked into his room, woke him up and said, ‘Mate, you’re going to have to get up. I just had a phone call from Fages. Walshy has been murdered.’
I felt very uneasy telling him that, because even though Fages had been clear about what had happened, in my mind I still didn’t feel that it could be true. It was like I was having a weird, lifelike dream. I kept thinking I’d suddenly wake up and think, ‘Geez, that was scary.’
Ellie insisted on driving us across town to West Lakes. I don’t think a single word was said the whole 20 minutes it took to get there. It was a stunned silence.
I reckon Ellie was in shock too, because she ran a red light and that’s something she’d never do deliberately.
Fages got us all inside and we sat together in the theatre where we usually had our team meetings and game reviews. Everyone was there – players, coaches, Fages, Rob Chapman and other key staff. You could have heard a pin drop as we were told that Walshy had been stabbed to death inside his home.
That’s what we did for most of the day. The club ordered lunch and we all just hung, speaking occasionally but mostly just sitting and staring at nothing. At one stage I had to go for a walk by myself because I was struggling to comprehend what had happened. Nothing made sense. Walshy was meant to be right here with us, and we were meant to be having our main training session, preparing to play Geelong.
The Notorious Camp
The pre-season camp the Adelaide Crows attended after the 2017 grand final loss sparked significant controversy.
The main activity of the camp was the ‘rite of passage’. The worst bit of the camp was when we saw an example of what doing the rite of passage would be like. We stood off to the side and watched a bloke who was tied to a rope. He said he was a sex addict and he was trying to make it to a knife to cut himself free of his addiction and all his associated baggage. The guys on the other end of the rope were swinging him that hard on the dirt that I was thinking, ‘What the fuck is this?’ A few of us spoke up and said, ‘There’s no way we’re doing that.’ One member of the group threatened to leave the camp altogether after what we saw.
We were reassured that our experience would not be as extreme as that.
When I did it, the facilitators and some members of the group were yelling at me, trying to put me into an emotional state or distract me. One of the facilitators said things to me like ‘You don’t have a relationship with your old man!’
I’d spoken about that openly, so it didn’t worry me, but other things came up that I’d told the facilitators in confidence …
It took most of us about an hour to finish the rite of passage. I was so emotional and stuffed by the end of it that I was in tears. I was in a moon boot, my foot was killing me and I was in agony, but I kept telling myself, I’ve just got to do this – I’ve just got to fight. It got to the point where I was trying to crawl
without putting any weight on my right foot. The moon boot got so trashed that I had to throw it out afterwards. But I felt I couldn’t quit; what sort of message would that have sent to the boys? Pulling out wasn’t an option.
Did I feel any different after going through that experience?
I don’t know. I was just bloody glad it was over.
We could hear the other groups throughout the campground, but we didn’t see them for the three days, so we never really knew what the others were doing. We all came together at the end and spoke about what we’d got out of it. Some players later said ‘Group 1’ looked shell-shocked, but I thought we were just physically and mentally exhausted.
We got to keep a piece of the rope that we’d cut ourselves free from during the rite of passage, and I kept that for a long time. Eventually, I threw it out because I felt like I needed to move on. But the fallout from that camp would haunt some players and the club more broadly for years.
BOUNCING BACK IN MY 30s
They say you wise up with experience and that was definitely the case for me in both my career and personal life. From the high points on the field to those moments when it felt like I had been whacked in the guts by someone holding a four-by-two, it felt like everything I’d learned enabled me to play the best footy of my life in 2023.
Not in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have a career-best season at the ripe old age of 33!
It might sound strange but being aware that the end could come at any stage gave me a freedom of sorts. If it was to be my final season, I was going to leave no stone unturned – I just wanted to get the best out of myself.
The determination to make sure I was as fit as possible came from experience. During my late 20s, when I battled niggling injuries and struggled to find my best form, footy felt tougher and it was harder to get involved in matches. In consultation with Darren Burgess and our strength-and-conditioning coach Josh Manuel, we devised a program where I’d build my cardiovascular fitness while also keeping my strength.
The payoff, hopefully, would be that I felt fresh when I was playing while also managing to remain injury free. At different stages in my career, you could have gotten better odds on winning Tattslotto than that eventuating. But the training recipe proved to be a masterstroke.
TEX – A TAYLOR MADE FOOTY STORY details the decorated career of Taylor Walker, who was assisted in authoring his story by Courtney Walsh from foxsports.com.au and Reece Homfray
*The extracts have been lightly edited to fit to size
Tex: A Taylor Made Footy Story by Taylor Walker (HarperCollinsPublishers Australia $49.99)