Official website of the Essendon District Football League

Vale Allan Walters: A Tribute to a True Gentleman of Local Footy

By Tara Murray


Allan Walters is the heart and soul of the Sunbury Kangaroos Football Netball Club. And always will be.

The world of so many people was turned upside down when the news came through that Allan had passed away on Saturday.

Wins and losses no longer mattered, as a community mourned a great man and one of the best.

First and foremost Allan was a husband to Lori and father to Jaimilee and Geoff. He loved his family so dearly.

The Kangaroos were just lucky enough that his family shared him with the club.

To the Kangaroos, Allan had been a player, a premiership winning coach, a committee member, a team manager, a president and everything in between.

But none of those words do him justice. He was much more than that.

He was a friend and to many people at the club and local football community he was family.

Whether you had been there 10 years and played 200 games or there in your first season at the club and with a handful of games to your name, Allan wanted to know you.

You were more than just a magnet on the board, you were someone who Allan could share his incredible love of the Kangaroos with.

He was always at training and would get to every game he could.

He would be the loudest on side-lines telling his players if they were playing good or bad, along with the odd spray at the umpire.

Allan was the first to give it out and if you didn’t cop it from him, you were doing something wrong.

At the same time, he would take it in return.

His microphone fails at the weekly team dinner, along with his chompers and love of dim sims regularly getting a mention.

Many players worked for and with Allan, with the football club just part of the journey and the story.

He was passionate about his Kangaroos and wanted to do anything to make sure his players and teams succeeded on and off the field.

Allan had been at the club at the lowest points when the club was losing every week and struggling to survive.

He was president when the club finally broke through for its first senior premiership and was still in charge when the club moved to the Essendon District Football League and completed a perfect first season.

It was Allan that was behind the push for the club to have a women’s side and was their biggest supporter.

He wasn’t finished.

New club rooms, which are being built in the coming months, were his vision.

As was joining the senior and junior football clubs into one along with the cricket club.

It’s shattering he won’t get to see all the results of that hard work.

While things are still a blur one thing is certain, that those at the club will continue the hard work that Allan had done to achieve everything that he wanted and much more.

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