“That’s when I really started to take my footy seriously. At that age it was a strange couple of years for me, I would burst into tears if we lost. I was a Collingwood supporter and I would kick the couch, kick holes in the wall.

Yeah! How lucky are we to have a kid like AW?

Yeah! How lucky are we to have a kid like AW?

He's a good kid.

DOA, ya done good!!!

I didn’t speak the whole way home to Echuca with mum and dad. When we got home I jumped out my window in just my footy shorts and a singlet in the rain and I was running around shivering cold for hours trying to kick the footy into trees and basketball posts, dodging my dog Denzel," Walker said.

“I was angry with myself and I thought I had to learn how to play in those conditions, I thought it was going to help me because you are young and you see what AFL people are doing on the news, how they train in the wet and we always used to stop training if it started raining so I thought I had to find out how to play in wet conditions.

He began training on his own so that by the time the remainder of the group returned after their break he had already added four kilograms to his skinny frame.

As a dad I would love to see him given a bit more freedom. I have seen it over the years as a parent where he is standing on people’s heads and dominating a game from the middle and kicking five or six goals out of the midfield and doing those flashy things ...

It was with Ben that Andrew would jump off the roof of the house as a six-year-old holding a plastic bag over his head to see if he could float. It was with Ben he jumped from the roof of the house onto a trampoline to see how far they could bounce. It was with Ben that he threw a chair down the chimney, and again it was just to see what would happen.