Johnathan Thurston lets loose that trademark machine-gun cackle. Then lets slip a dirty little secret.
Sam Walker isn’t quite the mercurial, playmaking version of a small dog chasing cars in the street.
“And I got that sense very early on from watching Sammy,” one of the greatest halfbacks of all time says.
“It’s not like he goes out there and plays everything off the cuff at all. It just looks like it.”
Daly Cherry-Evans has played 377 NRL games, and would have had as many teammates, too. None have read the game like his latest, and last, NRL halves partner.
Andrew Johns hasn’t seen a halfback from the same mould as Walker in 15 years.
In total, the champion playmakers the Herald canvassed boast more than 1500 games of NRL experience between them, along with 14 premierships, 109 Origins and 124 Test matches. And they all agree.
Sam Walker – who will make a remarkable 27-day recovery from a syndesmosis injury to take on the Dolphins in Friday night’s grand final qualifier – is a playmaker unlike any other.
Organised chaos: Breaking down the beauty in Sam’s game
Ben Walker is the old playmaker who knows Sam best. Though Ben’s own two grand final wins in those all-conquering Broncos outfits of the late 1990s and successful Queensland coaching career pale next to his efforts as a family man and father.
Especially when he welcomes you into his favourite father-son catch-up with one of the NRL’s best halfbacks.
“The beauty of being able to talk to him after a game is asking what he saw in a moment before executing a pass or a kick,” Ben explains.
“And I know the way he plays looks a bit chaotic and off the cuff, but those explanations of, ‘I know this defender has a habit of turning in on this play’, or, ‘The fullback can drift too far across field late in a half’ – that’s where you learn he’s far more considered and more calculating than people would think.
“He’s certainly more methodical than most halfbacks that I’ve come across or coached, and I played with some great ones. He’d do it as a kid, too. Friday night footy at home, we’d be forever pausing, rewinding, asking why a play had happened or analysing it.
“So those big highlight plays, most times I’d say he would have been thinking about that well before the game during the week, if not two weeks beforehand.”
For Thurston, one skinny, silky and supremely skilled halfback can see another working out how to thrive, not just survive, in a sport of car-crash collisions with a Steeden pinballing about in the middle.
“I got the sense he knew how to handle a rushing defensive line, mostly because he had to,” Thurston says of his early encounters with Walker in his junior representative days.
“Sam’s quite comfortable in that uncomfortable space – when you’re digging deep into the line with the ball, he can react to the defence, make a good decision, knowing he could get whacked.
“You learn how to adapt to that. Because when you’re the smallest player on the field, you just have to.”
Johns, meanwhile, adores the risk-taker in Walker. The last-bob gambler who will take those calculations and considerations – all those weeks, months and years of pre-game legwork – and still try something most players wouldn’t dare dream of.
Like the cross-field, 50-metre kick that landed smack bang on the chest of Daniel Tupou against the Warriors in 2024.
“No one has played the game anything like the way Sam does – he treats the NRL and Origin like his own backyard,” Johns says.
“The closest I have seen is Alfie Langer, and they’re so similar in so many ways: risk-taking, impulsive, attacking halves. He’s just a breath of fresh air.”
Especially so for Cherry-Evans, who will line up alongside Walker at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night, knowing he may have only 80 minutes left in the NRL after 16 years at the top level.
How two of the game’s great freewheeling halves would combine and conduct Trent Robinson’s small galaxy of attacking stars posed one of this season’s curliest questions. Cherry-Evans’ signing at Bondi brought scrutiny on both sides of the scrum base.
“I might be the senior half in the combination,” Cherry-Evans says, “but I really love listening to Sam talk about footy. And what he sees in the game, I’d say it’s a bit different to anyone else I’ve come across.
“I’ve definitely learned things from him this year and considered things I probably never would have because the way he approaches the game is so unique. It’s the little things he sees, and they’ll stay in-house, but I’ll take them with me as a playmaker, for sure.”
Those who encounter Walker, 24, around Roosters HQ, or his and Langer’s old Norths Tigers stomping ground, notice two things: the ready smile, and seemingly never too far behind, a ready Steeden. A perusal of photos from any pre-game scene shows the No.7 with football seemingly glued to his hands.
Johns notes: “Sam will carry and pass with his left hand, but kick long with his right foot, and kick short with his left and right. I haven’t seen too many players ever with that much skill.”
Ben Walker confirms the rare ambidexterity.
“His handwriting is atrocious, but he writes left-handed,” he says. “Then when he plays cricket, he bowls and throws right-handed, which helps with his grubber kicks, because it means he’s guiding the ball down with his left hand.”
Luke Keary, meanwhile, enjoyed the same vantage point as Cherry-Evans, and Cooper Cronk offered a guiding hand when Walker first arrived at the club as a schoolboy prodigy.
Keary speaks the same way as Cherry-Evans about Walker.
“Ninety-five per cent of kids that come into the NRL are shaped by their junior system and a lot of that looks very, very similar to first grade – the same overall shapes and principles anyway,” he says.
“So Sammy arrives with this different outlook and, yeah, it takes him time to adapt, but I think that’s why he succeeded straight away for Queensland in Origin. Origin is built on those big moments and the quicker and bigger the game gets, then the better he goes, because he’s a bit different to most halves.”
Cronk’s comments as Roosters halves consultant a day after Walker’s SCG debut ring true five years and 106 games later. Particularly given the No.7’s absence was so keenly felt in the Tricolours’ week one finals loss to Penrith, when they were held scoreless from the 24th minute, despite Nathan Cleary being sent to the sin bin.
After an 18-year-old Walker carved up the Warriors in 2021, Cronk told Fox Sports’ NRL360 he had “nothing to do” with the teen tyro’s rise.
“The only 5 per cent that I’m going to work with [him on] is some strategy around why he runs. If he can understand why he ran or threw that pass, then you’ve got a player,” Cronk said.
“To be a dominant halfback you’ve got to be creative for yourself first before creating for other people, so your eyes have got to go see what’s in front of you – is there something for me?
“The eyes will tell you what to do, and then your instincts take off on the back of that.”
Five years on from Cronk’s prescient words, the Roosters need Walker’s instinctive brilliance more than ever. Even if, as the champion playmakers explain and enthuse, there’s so much to his game than just impulse and aptitude.
The backdrop of his month-long recovery from ankle surgery, paused $6 million contract talks, Cherry-Evans’ looming NRL swansong and the ubiquitous spotlight that come with a glamour club are all just fruit for the sideboard.
Because as Johns says: “Sometimes all you can do is just sit back and wonder. How on earth did Sam Walker just do that?”
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