With just over a minute left at Adelaide Oval, you can cut the tension with a knife.
On one side is Melbourne, undefeated from its first nine matches. On the other, the Adelaide Crows, buoyed by a parochial home crowd and spoiling for another upset.
The Demons still lead, but the Crows are surging. A 16-point margin heading into time-on in the last quarter has been cut to just five points.
Crows captain Rory Sloane hacks a rushed, floating kick into his side’s forward line. It’s grabbed by his fellow veteran and good mate Taylor Walker.
The 31-year-old holds the yellow Sherrin — and the match — in his big hands.
He doesn’t falter.
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It’s Walker’s 30th goal from nine games this season.
Post-match, Walker gave an insight as to what was going through his mind as he lined up for goal.
As Adelaide begins its rebuild, the man leading the charge is one written off by many fans a year ago. The man they call “Tex”, the Crows’ oft-maligned former skipper, is in the midst of a career year.
The boy from Broken Hill
Broken Hill is a unique place. It’s a historic mining centre that’s now rapidly evolving into a green energy hotbed.
It operates on Adelaide time despite being governed by politicians in Sydney. And it’s a town that loves Aussie rules in a state devoted to rugby league.
The Silver City’s footy teams know each other pretty well: there’s only four of them. It’s been that way for more than a century.
The footy’s tough, like the miners who fill the teams. And over the years, the local league has uncovered a few gems.
Dean Solomon, the town’s former AFL games record holder, starred for North Broken Hill as a 16-year-old before beginning his professional journey.
Walker is a product of the same club, the Bulldogs.
He’s the son of local legend Wayne “Wacky” Walker, who won the league best and fairest award in three different decades. Tex kicked 43 goals in nine games as a 16-year-old, leading North to a flag before heading to the big smoke.
The New South Wales pipeline
Walker joined the Adelaide Crows via a short-lived New South Wales academy program that was designed to boost the talent coming through the nation’s most populous state. If he was starting his AFL career now, he’d be tied to the Giants.
Walker was one of several speculative bets the Crows made using the scheme. He was a lifelong Crows fan, and the fit seemed good. But despite his undeniable talent, there were still a few question marks over him as a junior. Some thought he would be too small to be a full-time key position forward, and not mobile enough to be a midfielder.
The concerns were ill-founded.
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Walker has turned his limitations into strengths. Although not incredibly quick in a straight line, Walker is able to dart and dodge between opponents, creating space in a shoebox.
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At the same time, Walker has good core strength and can dominate all bar the strongest opponents.
The evolved Texan
Despite being old school in appearance, Walker’s football is decidedly new school. Like Nikola Jokic in the NBA, he is a big-bodied player adept at creating for his teammates as much as for himself.
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While the spearheads of old racked up goals by the armful, the stinginess of modern defences has made bags harder to come by. The best forwards have adapted by adding new strings to their bow. Walker, with his textbook kicking, can play his teammates into good position by threatening to score from almost anywhere.
The Crows’ forward lines of 2016 and 2017 were the high water mark of modern attacking footy. They were led by two taller options, Walker and Tom Lynch, who were instigators as much as they were finishers. They were complimented by fellow talls Mitch McGovern and Josh Jenkins, and a pair of elite small forwards in Eddie Betts and Charlie Cameron.
But the passage of time changes players like it does the game. The introduction of the 6-6-6 starting positions rule dulled the Crows’ attacking edge. Now only two of that stellar front six remain, both of whom are on the wrong side of 30. Walker has shifted closer to goal, patrolling the attacking 50.
He’s taking far fewer marks on lead than he did in his prime. They’ve been replaced by a heavy diet of contested grabs and tackles inside 50. Walker is winning more attacking one-on-ones than ever before, his stats are 10 per cent above the league average of 28 per cent.
For the Adelaide faithful, there’s emerging hope in a new batch of forwards: Riley Thilthorpe, Darcy Fogarty and Elliott Himmelberg as talls, Shane McAdam, James Rowe and Ned McHenry as smalls. A big part of Walker’s role from now on will be to shepherd that young crop through.
Those who were busy writing off Walker last year have been dealt a healthy slice of humble pie. Still, it’s easy to see Walker’s football career perhaps ending not in the Crows’ red, blue and gold, but with his mates in the blue and white of North Broken Hill.
Until then, Crows fans will hope Walker has a few more big game bags left in those ageing legs.
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