A Coach’s Toughest Talk
With coach Phil Walsh gone, tragically murdered last week, the speech he delivered at his friend and colleague’s funeral carries extra weight.
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(Ed. Note: This story was originally published in The Sunday Mail.)
Phil Walsh, a coach at the highest level of Australian football for almost 20 years now, stepped to the podium as he prepared to deliver one of the toughest talks he had ever given.
He didn’t look at notes. He stood tall. He braced his hands on the lectern. He eyeballed the crowd the entire time.
Walshy, as he was known to everyone within the footballing fraternity, had nailed his speech down days before. He recorded himself reading it on his phone, and when he would ride to and from training every day he would listen to it through his headphones to memorize it.
This was the most important speech of his life, and he wasn’t going to mess it up for his great mate.
Walshy and Dean Bailey had known each other for a long time. Coaching together, traveling together, and dining together with their wives, the became as close to being brothers as two men can. Walshy was now with cross-town rival Port Adelaide, but for today at least, team colors were simply a sign of connection that was bigger than petty rivalries.
Players and staff were in attendance from more teams than just the Crows. Bailey’s early death — from a cancer he was diagnosed with only months earlier — had united the whole industry. Walsh took a deep breath, and began to eulogize the man that thousands of people were mourning only days before the 2014 AFL season started.
“Windy Hill 1987,” he started bluntly. “Only 8000 people watched. Number 31 caught my eye. It wasn’t so much a piece of play — it was the fact he was wearing wetsuit bike pants.”
A dry sense of humor had clearly been a strong suit of both men.
“I was an opponent that day,” Walshy continued, “and at the end of the game, I shook hands and introduced myself. I wouldn’t talk to Dean Bailey again until November 2001 when he joined Port Adelaide. For the next 13 years, I never stopped talking to him.”
Then, after touching on how the loss hit him — “I’ll miss him so much,” he said — he subtly transitioned into another gear: the coach as a motivator, without any bluster or brimstone, channelling Bails while paying him homage at the same time.
“If you look up the word coach,” Walshy began, “it literally means ‘a vehicle that takes people from where they are to where they need to be.’ No one did that better than Dean Bailey. He was a master coach.
“Some used fear and force to get players where they need to be. Dean Bailey quietly guided players to places they never imagined they could get. He saw things in all of us that we didn’t see in ourselves. He made us better. He cared.”
The words hit home, and the tears came in floods for the coaches and players in the room. Each one felt like he was talking straight to them.
Walshy stood strong though. He had known this would be tough, and the tales of good times on road trips together were expertly inserted at just the right time.
“For many years, I shared a room with Bails on interstate trips.” A wry smile crept into the corner of his mouth. “There’s some people in this room who know sharing a room with me is not a coveted prize. If we were in Sydney or Brisbane or Perth, it meant green bottles, BBQ chips, and Friday night football.
“There were some great coaching moves made in that relaxed state on some of those hotel beds. And in 2004, some of those hotel room dreams came true.”
The day when it all came together for the premiership they shared at Port Adelaide taught this wise man something too.
“I learned an important lesson in 2004: victory is not a victory unless it’s a shared one. Something that Dean Bailey lived by. He shared his victories. He didn’t seek the spotlight. He spent time with people.”
More humor followed: Bails hairy back scaring new recruits in the showers. The pools of sweat he would leave in the visitor’s chair at Walshy’s desk. His Picasso like precision at drawing an oval on a whiteboard.
The positive air that accompanied these little images of club life was welcome, but only short relief.
“Football’s been so good to many of us, but football gave Dean some whacks. Some of us thought unfairly. But Dean copped his whacks, and it didn’t diminish his love and passion of the game.”
I looked around through my own tear filled eyes and saw I wasn’t alone. Not a dry eye remained in the house now, and as Walshy paused to prep himself for the run home, you could hear a pin drop in the biggest space at the brand new Adelaide Oval.
“Last Sunday when I visited Dean, I knew he didn’t have many breaths left. The look on his wife and mother’s face when I walked into room 440 told me all I needed to know.
“He had a vision for all of us, and that was to be the best we possibly could be. He’d want us all to chase our breathless moments and, like Dean did, he’d want us to do it with humility and humor. And to always remember to share our victories with those close to us.
“I loved you Bails.”
For the first time, the stoic man who held the room captive began to choke up.
“I’m gonna miss you so much. Rest in peace.”
(This is an extract from the upcoming book about a coach who died while still at the top of the game. You can follow the story here or simply register your support for the family he left behind at www.BreakfastWithBails.com.)
