Phil Walsh was a masterpiece unfinished.

In the wake of his tragic passing last week, there is no other way than to look upon the man whose football reach stretched out across four states, seven clubs and a generation of young footballers.

As a player, he flashed like a comet all too briefly across the football sky, and was gone after only 122 games.

His time at Collingwood came and went with almost indecent haste, swept up in a wave of enmity between two clubs intent on doing as much damage to the other as they possibly could.

As an assistant coach, he helped change the game and worked for almost two decades to get himself into a position where Adelaide installed him as its senior coach in late 2014.

As senior coach, he was only 12 games into the role when inexplicably and inconceivably his life was taken in the most tragic of circumstances in the early hours of last Friday.

Of a life in VFL-AFL football that spanned more than 30 years, only one of them was spent at Collingwood, but that shouldn't diminish what he achieved in that all-too-brief time, or what the club lost in his parting.

That year was 1983, and the young man from Hamilton - a productive zone that produced so many good Magpies - made an impression that few Collingwood fans will forget.

He was an unheralded, bargain-basement recruit when he came to Victoria Park in a time of extraordinary change. Politically, the Collingwood Football Club had endured a seismic shift, and it would reverberate to the playing field after the newly-elected New Magpies promised the most expensive recruiting spree in the club's history.

Walsh was barely noticed early on against a backdrop of high-priced recruits that included Richmond stars David Cloke and Geoff Raines, as well as interstaters Mike Richardson, Gary Shaw and Greg Phillips. New, too, was the coach, Port Adelaide legend John Cahill, as a new broom swept through one of the most traditional football clubs in the land.

The young man from the bush was 23, and had played for Hamilton Kangaroos, as they were then, as well as with Redan under John Northey, and he had been recommended to Collingwood by one of its former players, Paul Cranage. It would be a fitting recommendation.

Cranage had come from Hamilton's Monivae College a decade earlier, and he would win the Harry Collier Trophy in 1973, as best first-year player. A decade later, Walsh would win the same award, though his time in black and white would be even briefer than Cranage's, who himself played only 48 games across three seasons.

Cranage had reportedly told Cahill that if he was given a chance, Walsh would "play the first game of the year." He would, too, and it would be in front of an emotionally-charged crowd of more than 72,000 for the opening game of the 1983 season between Collingwood and Melbourne.

This was no ordinary match, though. It was Peter Moore's first game against his old side, and tension was there from the outset.

One Magpie fan reacted bitterly to Moore's transfer to the Demons. He unveiled a banner "Moore Filth", and such was the anger from both sides that it was removed at half-time with Melbourne threatening legal action.

Walsh’s debut came 11 days after his 23rd birthday. There was said to be tension inside the Magpies' camp, too, with The Age's Trevor Grant reporting: "Collingwood's big spending campaign, aimed at making up for the misery of the past 24 years, appears to be causing unrest among the players at the club ... (some are) convinced that the players' rooms is a hive of discontent."

The new recruit had 20 disposals as the Magpies overran Melbourne in the final term, and 18 more the following week against Geelong, when new Cats coach Tom Hafey returned to Victoria Park.

Those early games set the scene for a remarkable debut season, where Walsh combined his ability for winning possessions with his pace and creative flair on the wing.

After that initial win against the Demons, the Magpies had a four-game losing streak, starting with the Geelong game, and including key sides Carlton, Essendon and Hawthorn.

In that game against the Hawks, Walsh took on and beat Russell Greene. It got the point where Hawthorn coach Allan Jeans switched Greene to the other wing onto Ricky Barham. Walsh had 33 touches and kicked a goal.

He wasn't one of the players that Cahill targeted when the frustrated coach said after the game that his players were "too nice and too soft".

Collingwood won the next three games, including a 48-point win over Richmond in round eight. The Tigers first took note of the Magpie wingman wearing the No.41 jumper who had 27 touches in yet another strong display.

Walsh would go on to play every one of Collingwood's 22 games for the season. The Magpies' highly-paid recruits had a mixed introduction in terms of their individual performances in that first year, but Walsh was an exception.

One of his best performances came against Hawthorn the next time the two teams met. The Magpies were soundly beaten, but the wingman from the western districts barely put in a moderate performance all season.

In an interview with Lou Richards, then a columnist with the Sun News-Pictorial, Walsh took time out from his teaching at Gladstone Park High to speak about his promising first season of VFL football.

Walsh was already proving he was different to the run-of-the-mill recruits who barely gave much of themselves in fear of saying something wrong.

He told Richards: "If it all ended tomorrow, well I doubt very much that it would be the end of the world ... I like to think I know where I am going and what I'm doing."

Then he added: "I really like country life. Football is just a small part of things, but down here (in Melbourne) it is all consuming.

"I think there is a big brother element where the administrators always want to know what you are doing. I admire guys like Billy Picken and a few others who have established good jobs and futures for themselves.

"Too many blokes expect football to do it all for them."

When Richards posed the question of whether Walsh could win the Copeland Trophy in his first year, Walsh said: "I reckon Billy and Mick (Michael Taylor) have it between them."

One of the kids pictured in the Sun photograph of Walsh to run with the story ahead of the round 17 game against North Melbourne was a 12-year-old student called Andrew Krakouer. Walsh would be playing against Krakouer's two famous brothers - Jim and Phil - on the Saturday, and young Andrew (uncle of future Magpie Andrew Krakouer) would in time also represent the Kangaroos.

Walsh's best game for Collingwood came on a massive stage. He would never play a VFL final in his playing days, but the round 19 game against the Tigers would be the closest he would come to such a feeling.

And that day he would come to upstage a legend before an MCG crowd of almost 82,000 fans. It was a historic day, the first time a footballer had reached the 400-game mark when Richmond's Kevin Bartlett passed a figure that some thought would never be attained.

Bartlett struggled through one of the biggest banners seen. But it was Walsh who turned on a show, having 33 touches and kicking three critical goals.

Walsh kicked a goal in the first, third and final term and he made a massive difference after the other wingman Ricky Barham was injured in the game.

The Herald said: "the absence of the speedy Magpie (Barham) was made up by the brilliant play of young Walsh who kicked (three) magnificent goals."

The Sun added: "While the star of the show, Bartlett, battled hard all day for his tidy sum of 16 kicks, it was a first-year kid from Collingwood named Phillip Walsh who stole a share of memorable scenes."

"At 23, he'll never get near KB's games tally, but he'll do a lot of damage before he departs the VFL scene. Two of his three goals were superb - the first was a 60m finishing touch to a towering mark, and the second a deft, running chip from the pocket, which put victory beyond Richmond's reach."

That last goal put Collingwood in front, before Richardson kicked a sealer late in the game. Walsh would end up with seven Brownlow Medal votes for the year - and three undoubtedly came that memorable day.

But the joy that Magpie fans had that day against the Tigers was short-lived. Walsh would play the last two games of Collingwood's 1983 season, but that would be it for his time in black and white.

The war between Richmond and Collingwood had already been ugly, but it was about to get even more so.

The Magpies thought they had unearthed a star that was going to shine for a long time. The Tigers were intent on pinching him.

The Age reported this week that Cranage had contacted Collingwood at the end of the 1983 season to warn them that Richmond was trying to poach Walsh. It reported: "(Cranage) phoned Walsh one night and said Collingwood had a brown paper bag ready for him: a sign-up payment. ’How much is in the paper bag,' Walsh wanted to know.’ Forty thousand dollars,' he was told. ’Well, Richmond's is bigger. It's got $60,000 in it.'"

Walsh did not attend the Collingwood Copeland Trophy in September 1983, having already been estranged from the club. But on the night he won the Harry Collier Trophy as Best First Year Player and would ultimately finish third in the best-and-fairest count.

Incredibly, just as he predicted weeks and weeks earlier, Picken would win the Trophy (with 87 votes), and Taylor was second (65). Walsh was third in the count with 56 votes.

The Magpies were determined to keep Walsh, who had endeared himself to the fans in a short period of time. On Copeland night, President Ranald Macdonald said: "I will be surprised if Walsh turns up at Richmond."

Sadly, he did. And it would come only after legal battle that threatened to drag on for many months before a resolution - albeit a begrudging one - ended with Walsh finally being cleared to Richmond before the start of the 1984 season.

That was the end of the Phillip Walsh story at Collingwood.

He would go on to play 40 games in three seasons at Richmond before transferring to the Brisbane Bears, where he won the inaugural club best and fairest. Again, his time was short-lived there, playing 60 games in four seasons.

Walsh's playing career was over. But he would soon start a journey that many saw as his destiny - to be a senior AFL coach.

Sadly, the horrific events of last week have left that destiny as another yet another unfinished piece of art.