Man's man exterior, yes. Burgeoning football colossus, definitely. Friendly bloke who believes in enjoying a beer after a game, check. Sensitive by nature, honest, trusting, nervous public speaker, neat freak, he's all that too.

Taylor Walker, at age 24, has also recently become the seventh captain of the Adelaide Football Club. And he is convinced that no one could possibly have been more surprised by that than him.

Recreating the moment when that dream proposition was put to him by his fourth AFL coach, Walker sets a scene featuring a man – half-speechless, half-wanting to shout for joy - who defied every fibre in his body by managing to remain upright and conscious.

It's not that he's being cagey about the finer details of this story. Walker describes how his most memorable meeting yet with the Crows' new on-field boss, Phil Walsh, involved drinks of some description and occurred last year before Christmas. But apart from feeling utterly overwhelmed, the first league captain originating from Broken Hill simply can't remember much else.

Interestingly, though his heart screamed "YES!" to Walsh's proposal, Walker's response was to temporarily put the matter on ice. Instinct told him that after just two years in Adelaide's leadership group, he should weigh all this up with his head. Then the lifelong sports nut who had never been asked to captain anything, let alone an AFL club, drove home in a euphoric stupor. Walker promptly rang his mother and cried.

"We couldn't talk to each other," he remembers of that conversation with the woman who, as a single mum and hairdresser, brought up three kids who wanted for nothing even if they weren't flush with funds.

"We were both crying. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and so I cried. It got the better of me."

This is the first, but not the last, time in a lengthy two-part conversation on the eve of his debut season as captain that Walker speaks freely about things that others might consider vulnerabilities.

This naturalness and openness, so evident in person, says as much about why Walker was selected as standalone skipper - at a time when fellow Adelaide stars and leaders, Patrick Dangerfield and Rory Sloane, are out of contract - as the way he notched 15 marks and six goals in a commanding round-one performance.

Outside the coffee shop of the Crows' West Lakes headquarters, Walker's information-rich chat is interrupted only by his seemingly hardwired response to acknowledge every passer-by with a wave of one gigantic hand and "g'day".

Questions about what it means to lead, and how he has come to hold a position of such responsibility, lead Walker to volunteer information about his parents' broken relationship. It's a hard and formative fact of the footballer's life he says he'll never really get over, despite the fact Walker broke a considerable period of silence with his dad, Wayne, maybe seven years back and now describes a "steady" relationship that sees them talk regularly.

With perceptible admiration, Walker explains how his mum, Margaret, cut and coiffed hair around the clock so that he and his two siblings didn't feel any more deprived than kids missing an absent father would. Aisha, two years Walker's senior, has followed in her mum's footsteps in hairdressing and Ayrton, four years older than his brother, works in the Broken Hill mine.

"Nan lived next door to us and used to drop us to school, pick us up, take us to training, so we were very, very lucky kids … but mum had to work pretty hard for it," Walker says.

"For mum, watching me play I think is a bit of a reward for what she did for us."

Unselfconsciously, Walker shares his sense of uncertainty about being an AFL skipper.

"I'm not going to be the best captain," he says, presumably meaning he doesn't expect that overnight.

"I don't know what sort of captain I'll be. But things I'm big on: I don't like to talk too much … Don't tell me what you're going to do, just do it."

Describing himself as a fatigued wreck at the end of last season, Walker says he was exhausted by football. He finished 2014 strongly, playing the last 15 games consecutively until the Crows finished 10th with 11 wins - a position that saw them miss finals again and sack the coach – but Walker did this only after dedicating most of the precious year to recovering from a knee injury that ruined his 2013.

So by the time season 2014 was done, he was frankly jack of the weekly tightrope act of balancing more intense training with ample recovery. At a time when Walker would usually adventure overseas, he stayed at home because his body and mind felt, to use his word, "knackered".

Christmas was passed among nearest and dearest in Broken Hill. New Year's Eve was spent at the cricket.

"I couldn't be bothered checking in, checking out, packing, unpacking," Walker says.

"My legs were just so tired."

In remembering the January day when the Crows announced their seventh captain  - "It felt so good walking in there with all my teammates, that was really touching for me, but I was SO nervous I couldn't even tell you what I said" - Walker divulges not only his fear of public speaking but a telltale sign that he's freaking out.

"You watch, the next time I do something like that, just watch, I'll get a red rash on my neck!" he says.

But to box the man who is now known more widely as "Tex" than Taylor, merely as a casual and laid back lad is to overlook other strong traits that clearly factored in the making of him as captain.

Walker's lesser-known fastidious side, the yang to his relaxed yin, reveals itself in an autobiographical blurb:

"I'm very clean. I've got my own diary. I love my time management, I think that's very important."

The cleanliness characteristic sounds worthy of follow-up with his ex-housemate and now ex-Crow, Bernie Vince. Exhibit A: "I hate mess! Like leaving your shoes in the living room area, or not washing your cups but putting them straight into the dishwasher. I clean up straight after we finish eating."

Exhibit B:  "Bernie used to leave things lying around every now and again, but I'd pick them up and chuck them in front of his door. I just couldn't stand it."

Walker's habits around time management leads us to coach Walsh, who might rival world records in the field given the working and resting times he keeps.

"He's very different," Walker begins on the man who does not drink alcohol or coffee, and for years rode his bike to work because an accident put him off driving.

"He goes to bed at 8 o'clock and he tells all the boys: 'don't message me after 8 o'clock'. It's funny, recently I messaged him and it was like 8:30, because we didn't know what time we were starting the next day. I didn't get a reply. Then, at 2.12am, he messaged me back. 2.12 in the morning! He was up!"

Deeper study of the new captain-coach pair suggests that while they might be contrasting personalities outwardly, they have enough in common to suggest they will be a well balanced, and presumably effective, leadership combination.

Given Walsh told Fairfax Media earlier this year that "I've got no patience. I can't stand fishing, I hate golf". Walker doesn't imagine he'll convert him to one of his favourite pastimes, which involves a hook and sinker, any time soon. But the pair clearly see eye-to-eye elsewhere, such as in what Walker says Walsh terms "man conversations".

One such conversation happened when Walsh decided that Walker was his captaincy choice and the matter was tabled with a leadership group featuring other would-be skippers Dangerfield and Sloane.

"They've taken it really well," Walker says of the soon-to-be out-of-contract pair who jointly led Adelaide throughout last year.

"Phil put forward what he wanted and they all agreed."

Saying he is "confident" that Dangerfield and Sloane will remain at Adelaide beyond 2015 – a view counter to the status quo when it comes to Dangerfield – Walker believes Adelaide can play finals this season. His is convinced the side that hasn't featured in September since 2012 is on the rise.

In his eight years with Adelaide, Walker has had four senior coaches. From the outside it would seem his relationship with the first - Neil Craig – was difficult. But with years to reflect on harder football lessons that former mentor taught him, Walker shows how his thought process on the topic has evolved.

"When he didn't play me early on I was like 'bloody hell, why isn't he playing me?'

"He said to me 'mate, your defensive pressure is pretty much non-existent.' I'd say 'yeah, but I'm kicking goals.' But now I'm so thankful for Neil's decisions and how he taught me."

After a brief stint by Mark Bickley, Brenton Sanderson's tenure was considerably shorter than Craig's and the terrain is clearly more sensitive.  But even in acknowledging some of Sanderson's shortcomings, Walker describes him as "awesome".

"After Craigy, I was in and out of the team, and I was a bit unhappy, so for me Sando coming over was a bit of a weight off the shoulders.

"He just said to me: 'mate, just go and play footy. That's what you do best and that's what we get paid to do.' So he was awesome. I really enjoyed Sando's time."

So why didn't it work out ultimately?

"I don't know," Walker says.

"In terms of his communication, it wasn't ideal, it wasn't the best. But I'm not too sure and I don't really want to go into it. The club has made its decision and you move forward. You don't get time to reflect on what was, or what happened."

For some reasons obvious, others less so, Walsh's arrival has hit a sweet spot for Walker. It's uncanny, in retrospect, that Adelaide's gun forward had been deeply impressed by the man who would go on to select him as skipper before he even knew he was going to be his next AFL coach.

A close friend of Dean Bailey's, who worked at Adelaide after his four years coaching Melbourne, Walsh delivered the funeral eulogy last year. Walker, among the football mass that attended, was blown away.

"He had no notes, the eulogy went for 10 minutes and it was unbelievable. From that day I was like 'I just wanna meet this bloke'," he says.

When Walsh was made Adelaide's coach, this was the first thing Walker said to him.

To happier off-field goings on, Walker talks enthusiastically about the sense of achievement he's got from learning more about business. Specifically, how to make sense of a profit and loss sheet from the pub he now part-owns with Adelaide legend, now club director, Mark Ricciuto. Significantly, Walker bought into Norwood's Alma Tavern late last year with Sloane and Dangerfield.

It seems Walker is at the Alma a lot. He drops by every Friday to oversee bingo and chat with the older human fixtures. And no matter where he is after a game, Walker makes no apologies for enjoying an beer. Nothing crazy. Just enough to satisfy what he sees as a healthy thirst.

In this long-form exchange with one of the AFL's newest leaders and increasingly high-profile stars, everything is offered without Walker checking himself for an instant. The unspoken message is: this is me, here and now, nothing if not honest.