PATRICK Dangerfield woke up to a knock at the door at 5.30am on July 3, 2015.
Adelaide's GM of football David Noble stood in front of Dangerfield's house with devastating news.
>>Watch Dangerfield on Last Time I Cried in the player above
"Phil's been stabbed," Noble told Dangerfield.
"Phil's dead. You need to come in."
Phil Walsh had only been the coach of Adelaide for 12 games at that point, but the impact he left on the playing group was profound.
"It was just total and utter disbelief that someone who had only been at the organisation a really short period of time but had influenced so many was not going to be there," Dangerfield told Hamish McLachlan in the new series The Last Time I Cried.
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Teams might be rivals for the two-and-a-half hours they go against each other every weekend, but the game played between Collingwood and Hawthorn just 14 hours after Dangerfield heard the news felt like something totally different.
The players from both sides stood arm-in-arm in a circle on the middle of the MCG in silence to pay respect to Walsh – something Dangerfield will never forget.
"It was like the League wrapping their arms around us as an organisation," Dangerfield said.
Adelaide's game against Geelong that weekend was cancelled to allow everyone involved with the club to grieve, but the rush of emotions poured out after the round 15 game against the Eagles.
"Because Phil had spent plenty of time at West Coast and that's where he had come from, those guys were certainly emotional as well because they knew him so well," Dangerfield said.
"That was when everything was just laid bare in the changerooms afterwards, everyone was incredibly emotional and we were all crying.
"It was a total release of, 'Yep, this is real, he's gone, he's not coming back and what's next?'"
