A Dockers star opens up

The remaking of Michael Walters, the flashy Fremantle forward with the scything left foot, is one of the most compelling stories in the modern AFL.

Responding to the pain his failings were causing to those he loved most, Walters heeded signposts planted squarely in front of him to build a life for the better around his football.

The death of his grandfather and suicide of his cousin, the birth of his first of two daughters when he was just 21, the disappointment in the eyes of his mother and his partner as his career was slipping away and the will to extend his football use-by date in a manner his equally-skilled father could not manage, all combined suddenly into a watershed moment.

The tattooed talent has since executed a revival to the point where he is not only one of the most watchable players on the field, but a dependable and thriving father of two off it.

“It was one of those things where you had to step up and become a man,” Walters said, proudly preparing for what will be his first match in an AFL indigenous round. It will come tonight at Adelaide Oval against the Crows, in the State where his football heritage is indelibly linked.

“When I first started playing footy while my partner was pregnant, I felt like I was still immature and still had a lot of room to move to become the quality father I am now. So it was a massive thing for me to go back to Swans, overcome the adversity of getting sent back there and lose weight.

“Also to have a kid, it changed my whole mindset on life and me as a person. I wasn’t much of a worker and I quit school early, so to play something you love and get paid some OK money for it, why would you do something different?

“My actions had a big burden on everyone else, from my mum to my partner and my kids. They are the people, at the end of the day, that I don’t want to let down.”

It was with these words from Fremantle coach Ross Lyon in February of 2012, just a month after Walters had been banished back to WAFL club Swan Districts because of his unsatisfactory physical condition, that his extreme makeover was thrashed into action.

“We certainly support all our people but we challenge the behaviour and the door is open for everyone to conform to the expectations,” Lyon said at the time in words fitting of a football-father figure. “We’re hopeful of a return but at the end of the day, you act your way in and you act your way out.”

Walters, who turned 24 in January and has one older brother, has since acted his way in to the point where Lyon said earlier this year that his reformed charge could even be a future Fremantle captain.

Walters recalled how he could not see in the mirror the fat his club was telling him he had too much of, but ultimately lost 13kg to put his football life back in good order. In that, he said Lyon had been “a big part of my life”.

“I was thinking, ‘What is Ross talking about, I’m not fat’,” he said.

“But looking back at the photos now I think, ‘Yeah, you were a bit of a balloon’. When I went back to Swans, (coach) Greg Harding was a massive help. Also my mum. I was in the papers and on the news for almost a whole week straight, so she had some hard times and people kept asking her questions she didn’t know or couldn’t answer.

“She just told me to make sure that whatever I do, whether I want to play footy or not, it was up to me and I didn’t have to listen to anyone else. But if I really wanted to play football, to get out there and do it. Ross is big on everyone writing their own story, especially as a team. But as a person, I take it in my personal life that if I want to be a good father, I just have to write my own story by playing it simple.”

And it is clear there is a simple harmony in his family life as he snuggles up for a photograph with his partner Marnie Tyers and their children Laila, 3, and Addison, 1.

“She (Marnie) has been real good for me, a strong person,” Walters said. “She’s another one who had to put up with all the stuff as well. For a person like her to put up with me, most of all, you have to be pretty strong.”

He is also described as a “mini-me” clone of his father Mick by William Hurn, the father of West Coast captain Shannon, who played with Walters Sr in the SANFL.

“Mick only played one year with us at Central District … he was an unbelievable talent,” Hurn Sr said. “I’d put him in the mercurial bracket, he could do some really special things. As soon as I saw young Michael at Freo, you could see they looked the same and played the same.”

“I heard he was pretty good, that’s what he says anyway,” Walters laughs, later adding former Geelong wingman Peter Riccardi was his childhood football hero.

“Back then, I was only a young boy and I was too busy climbing the cricket nets and running amok. But he does inspire me, I look up to my dad. He showed me the way and led me to where I needed to be and if I needed advice, he was the first person I would go to, for sure.”

Walters was clearly embracing his chance to play in his first indigenous round match. His father is a Nunga man from SA, while his mother is a Noongar woman from WA’s South West.

“It’s a background I’m very proud of … for me, it means a lot,” he said.

“The AFL has been tremendous in the way they speak out for indigenous people. Especially at Freo, Ross is real keen on getting everyone involved in indigenous tradition. You couldn’t ask for a better club to do it.”

SA was where Walters made his AFL debut, on the same day childhood mate Clancee Pearce played his first senior game, nearly six years ago in a 24-point loss to Port Adelaide.

He was a late replacement for the injured Hayden Ballantyne, who he now combines with in one of the competition’s most ferocious small forward duos.

“Ballas is the type of player I want to mould my game on, his forward pressure is outstanding,” Walters said.

“If I can put on half the amount of pressure he does, then I’m in for a good day.”

He also received wide praise earlier this month when he lent a pair of boots to young indigenous player Orlyn Nichaloff, who had forgotten his ahead of a curtain-raiser match at Domain Stadium.

Orlyn was wearing the No.10 of his idol, who said the moment was also special for him.

“Growing up, my boots weren’t too flash,” Walters said. “For me to give my boots to a young kid who left his boots in Derby … it made a story out of something so small. It meant a lot to me.”

Walters admits he was likely to now be “somewhere bad” if it was not for football.

At the end of our interview in an Aubin Grove playground, he is stopped randomly by a group of six young boys, one who says he wears No.10 because of his Dockers idol.

They ask if he will have a quick kick with them and he obliges without a second thought, even taking on the role of umpire and bouncing the ball in the middle of his new-found friends.

There could barely have been a better example for what the humble young star has become.