From the 2012 season onwards, Walters has won more free kicks than any other Freo player every season, except 2013 and 2019 when he finished second.
I’m constantly infuriated by Joel Selwood and Luke Shuey being awarded free kicks, so I thought they’d make an interesting comparison. Selwood has won 2.6 free kicks a game over his career, and Shuey 1.7, compared to Walters 1.8. It’s worth noting though that Selwood and Shuey have exclusively played on-ball for their careers, whereas Walters has played a fair bit forward so has had fewer chances to win frees. Adjusted for possessions, Walters averages a free kick every 9.4 possessions, almost identical as Selwood who wins a free kick every 9.5 possessions. Shuey wins a free kick every 14 possessions.
So we know Walters is the most prolific free kick winner in the team for a decade, and wins frees at the same rate as a Selwood. Yet the argument is that he is still being treated unfairly by the umpires, including on the grounds of the umpires’ unconscious bias (some people might have put that more strongly). That might well be true, but he wins more frees than Fyfe (1.3 per game) and Dave Mundy (0.7 per game), who are around the ball more, so the interesting question to me is why are people more upset about the umpires’ treatment of Walters than Mundy, despite him winning more than twice as many free kicks as Mundy who, if unconscious bias plays a role, is as close as a golden-haired boy as Freo is ever likely to have.
I don’t have a definitive answer to that, but my view is that Walters looks like he is being infringed against more than Fyfe or Mundy, in part because he’s more slight, so contact affects him more. Fyfe and Mundy barrel through a contest – Walters ricochets off them. Fyfe, in particular, has given away more frees than he has won over his career, I think for that reason. If someone pushes Mundy in the back, or hits him high he just powers through it. I also think someone like Dave Mundy stays very upright as he approaches a contest, and usually isn’t moving very fast. Walters attacks the ball at pace, and is often horizontal before he’s even hit the contest. I think for all those reasons, when the same level of contact is applied to Walters he is more likely to go to ground.
There are probably times when Walters is looking for a free (like most players), but I think the reason he look so frequently infringed is the 18kg difference between Mundy and Walters.
So while I stick up for Walters if he’s accused by opposition fans for milking free kicks, while he is getting a Selwoodesque number of free kicks (and a better run than Shuey), I find it difficult to get behind arguments he is unfairly singled out by umpires.
