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Sam Walsh’s fondness for running developed while living in Darwin just before he became a teenager.

He would regularly join his dad, Wayne, who was then an AFLNT employee who had a huge reputation in football and cricket circles in south-west Victoria, on a six-kilometre run.

Carlton star Sam Walsh has made his presence felt in Carlton’s finals campaign.Credit: Eddie Jim

The pair would start at Rapid Creek and loop back up over a dusty bridge along the foreshore and home.

Wayne was fit but Sam, one of three brothers, soon had his old man’s match, jumping at tree branches and running ahead of his dad, who half-suspected the tacker enjoyed watching him puffing in the Top End’s humidity.

“I always enjoyed going for a run because I always thought it helped my footy. In junior footy I always thought the more contests I can get to the more I can impact the game,” Sam Walsh says. “We went at a fair click. It’s cool to look back on.”

As a junior, Walsh made an impact in game after game after game, first for junior Northern Territory teams, then for St Joseph’s College, the Geelong Falcons, and Vic Country when the family moved back to Ocean Grove in his teenage years.

Tag team: Sam Walsh and Charlie Curnow celebrate a goal in the elimination final.Credit: AFL Photos

Picked by Carlton at No. 1 in 2018, Walsh hit the track with the sort of fanaticism most 18-year-olds reserve for pizza.

He trained hard, and played hard too, with the rewards arriving as regularly as Darwin’s wet season. It was the Rising Star award, into the mark of the year, into All-Australian, into a club best and fairest in his first three seasons.

As durable as a country letterbox, Walsh did not have a setback until his fourth pre-season when he sustained a syndesmosis injury. He was back by round two but by the end of the year a back problem emerged that forced him out of Carlton’s heartbreaking final-round loss in 2022, which denied the Blues a place in the finals.

He had only missed one training session in four years and two games in that time, but the messages his body was sending him grew louder with sciatica affecting his kicking leg.

“It just feels like there’s a constant sort of sharp pain down your leg,” Walsh says.

The off-season break seemed to work, but once he was kicking and picking up the ball, the nerves got cranky again and back surgery was required days before last Christmas.

The microdiscectomy procedure relieved the pain, but the build-up was measured, with Walsh listening to his body and the experts around him as he stood out of the first four games in 2023, uncertain when he might return.

He missed playing, and he hated watching training, which made him realise how passionate he was about the game. But he eventually understood it was better to be at his best near the end of the season rather than grinding to the line as he had the previous year.

The rookie and his grandfather.

Walsh’s intensity hadn’t dimmed, but he needed to ensure enough energy was reserved for games, so he could execute his skills while giving maximum effort.

“I always want to train how I play, which I can still do, but instead of doing 150 ground balls I’m doing 30 [ground balls] and doing Pilates,” Walsh says.

Andrew Russell has prepared some of the best athletes the game has seen, including Shane Crawford and Cyril Rioli at Hawthorn and Charlie Curnow at the Blues.

He says Walsh sits comfortably among them, but now he is even smarter in the way he runs and prepares. Russell said the midfielder’s defining football trait was that he was never satisfied which, combined with his down-to-earth nature, made him well respected.

“He’s driven and humble and always looking to get better,” Russell says.

The 23-year-old also became as keen on the gym as he was about pounding the pavement, building the power to match his endurance so that he became more explosive. Toughness and resilience runs through the genes, with his grandfather Peter “Plumber” Walsh a Cobden legend.

“What I can bring to the team is being able to win the ball on the inside but also spread hard and connect through the lines,” Walsh said.

That skill was evident in the two goals he kicked in the Blues’ win over Melbourne in the semi-final.

He ran like he’d stolen something to put himself in a position to receive the ball in space and finished to kick two goals, a feat he has managed four other times. In those four games, he has polled 11 Brownlow votes. After the semi-final, he received 10 coaches’ votes.

Walsh says such performances are only possible when the midfield works as a collective, with captain Patrick Cripps and George Hewett’s grunt, Adam Cerra’s smarts and ruckmen Marc Pittonet and Tom De Koning’s body work complementing each other to let Walsh focus on what he does best.

Walsh made sure about half a dozen schoolmates had tickets to both finals, so they could watch the Blues in action, and he was down the Bellarine in trackies as his brother Tommy played in a premiership with Ocean Grove under his dad’s coaching a few weeks back.

“There’s about probably 10 to 12 of those boys who I keep in contact with who have always been a great support for me,” Walsh said.

Sam Walsh, who barracked for the Brisbane Lions growing up, with coach Michael Voss after a Blues’ win.Credit: Getty Images

That support was needed when the Blues looked destined for another year of turmoil as they slumped to 15th after 13 rounds. Walsh admitted all sorts of thoughts were going through his head as the team walked off after losing to Essendon, just days after re-establishing their focus at Ed Curnow’s property in Torquay.

“There is maybe a hidden lesson in that for all this because there’s no doubt you’re in that mindset, ‘This just isn’t going our way.’ As a group, we had to take a bit of ownership and from that point on we just weren’t even thinking about an end result or where we finished. We were just thinking about what we want to be known as,” Walsh says.

Walsh, Cerra and Cripps earned coaches’ votes in each of the first three matches of their winning run as the Blues began to roll.

“Sometimes you have to go through some tough times, whether it’s individually or as a team, to know what you value, so we probably found a fair bit of motivation from that period,” Walsh says.

Every lesson the team had learned was needed in those desperate 90 seconds at the end of the semi-final against Melbourne. Walsh was in the middle for the final centre bounce with 56 seconds remaining, alongside Cripps and Cerra, after running around the MCG for 100 minutes.

He admits the game became a blur. He had willed Sam Docherty’s kick inside 50 to reach Carlton’s extra number in the square. After Blake Acres’ goal he headed back to the middle. He knew what he had to do in the final minute and was confident his teammates knew too.

“There was an element of calmness out there because we’ve actually practised those scenarios and situations a fair bit probably in light of a few games last year,” Walsh says.

On Monday, he noted how different this September felt as the New York Giants’ comeback in the NFL over the Arizona Cardinals was raised.

“Usually at this time of year we’re in a pub watching the NFL, and now we are in and around a club,” Walsh said.

He has proven himself as a player made for finals, performing at a high level when it’s mattered most despite two interrupted pre-seasons. Any further treatment he might require to have him cherry ripe for next pre-season can wait until the Blues’ campaign is complete, a journey Walsh does not want to finish any time soon.

“It’s just such an addictive feeling. You can see why guys get to this position and want to just keep going and fronting up year in, year out,” Walsh says.

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