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Research dossier · People & Ideas

James Walker (Australian footballer)

Australian rules footballer, born 1979

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 12, 2025
Entity authorityQ6144999 ↗
Source-derived summary

James Walker (born 15 January 1979) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Fremantle Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He mainly played as a midfielder or a small defender.

He entered the University of Melbourne in 1997, where he was a resident at Trinity College, and in 2015, he gave the Cordner Oration at Grand Final Breakfast held at Trinity College.

Walker was drafted from the North Ballarat Rebels with the sixth selection in the 1997 National Draft and made his AFL debut against Essendon at Subiaco Oval in round 19, 1998. He played over 150 games for Fremantle, the first Victorian born player to do so. When not selected for the Fremantle side, he played for the Peel Thunder in the West Australian Football League, after initially playing for East Perth.

He won the AFL Grand Final Sprint in 2003 and 2004 and was noted as one of the fastest players in the AFL. He is the great-grandson of Collingwood legend Gordon Coventry.

Walker was delisted by Fremantle at the end of the 2007 season and chose to participate in the 2007–08 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race on board the yacht westernaustralia2011.com for the race leg across the Southern Ocean between Durban and Fremantle.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “James Walker (Australian footballer)” as australian rules footballer, born 1979. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 1997, 2015, 1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1979-01-15. The account is most persuasive where James, Walker and Australian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian rules footballer, born 1979. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6144999. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1997, 2015 and 1998.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James Walker (Australian footballer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James Walker (Australian footballer) primary sources, James Walker (Australian footballer) archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “James Walker (Australian footballer)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James Walker (Australian footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.