SHANE Watson is one of the best cricketers I have played against and with.

He will go down in history as one of the greats of the game. Two time Allan Border Medallist, Australian Player of the Year in all formats – only player to do so – an Australian captain, an IPL phenom, only Australian to have scored a century in all three formats and the most debated and maligned Australian cricketer of all time. This list goes on and on …

Importantly, I am a fan of Shane Watson as a player and as a person. But that hasn’t always been the case.

When Watto moved to Tasmania as an underperforming Queensland grade player, with a strong junior record, I couldn’t come at it. As a Tasmanian squad member, albeit a very junior one, I couldn’t understand how a player from such a proud and culturally strong state - Queensland - could even contemplate representing another state. Jimmy Maher, Michael Kasprowicz, Joe Dawes, Stuart Law, Trevor Barsby.

Brett Geeves: Shane Watson will go down as one of the greats Source: Getty Images

FULL MONTY: Teammate’s hilarious tribute to Watto

STAT ATTACK: Where Watto sits among Aussie greats

These are men of remarkably strong character that had built a culture based on performance and success. Heck, even I wanted to be like them. They won titles and were beasts that played with a ruthlessness that was intimidating. The thought of Maher openly mocking and laughing at me, as I was attempting to bowl to him, will always haunt me.

My own beliefs wouldn’t allow me the open mind required to fully comprehend why Shane had chosen to abandon his state to pursue opportunities in another. Even when Shane moved back home to Queensland, and then left again for New South Wales, I was bemused. As a young bloke, I wasn’t thinking about representing Australia. I wasn’t seeing cricket as a career path.

I wasn’t wired the same as Shane and the opportunity to make a reasonable living from playing a game I enjoyed whilst having the blessed opportunity to represent my family, friends, my home club Glenorchy and my state was enough fulfilment for me to be content in what I was doing.

Shane is as driven a human being you will meet and the fact that he chased opportunities away from the culturally strong Queensland and signed on with the recruit/opportunity friendly environment of Tasmania suggests that he always truly believed that he belonged at that level.

That he was destined for greatness and that playing state cricket was not going to be enough. And that is an enormous show of self-confidence: walking into a first-class team without having the statistical backing to mount a case to be a first-class debutant in your home state. Put simply: It worked.

Brett Geeves wasn’t Shane Watson’s biggest fan as a 19-year-old. Source: News Limited

Watto’s ability and potential were always obvious. The move to Tasmania may have been perceived by many at the time (myself included) as an easy ride into first-class cricket; but I can tell you now that the work-ethic, commitment to improvement and dedication to his body that Shane displayed from his first training session with Tasmania and beyond was a sight to behold.

It was at a level you would expect from a 10 year pro, not a 19 year old kid. Because of this, Shane kept himself out of social situations; that meant excessive drinking, eating poor food and the potential of doing something foolish and getting himself in trouble were off the table.

Obviously, we were not aligned spiritually as those three activities seem to be friends that I, to this day, visit regularly.

At the time, I had mistaken Watto’s drive for selfishness. I saw his work-ethic and commitment as being a brown noser.

My lack of maturity, and perhaps of those around me, took his lack of want to drink pints, shoot pool, get lippy with random punters who suggested that you bowled a pile of crapola and generally act like someone who cared little for their professional sporting career as complete nonsense and arrogant.

I wanted Shane to be a 19-year-old kid that made mistakes, just like me, but that drive and dedication wouldn’t allow him access to the joys/learnings of being a kid and I guess I was jealous of those attributes. And if you are 19 and jealous, it takes you to dislike. And that’s why being 19 is hard.

Brett Geeves: I had mistaken Watto’s drive for selfishness Source: Getty Images

As a cricket community, it feels like we have all made the same error in judgment that a pimply 19-year-old Hobartian made in 2001. Shane is a good man with great qualities. He is good company and has quite a dry sense of humour.

He is dashingly handsome. Plays the guitar and I think at times we have been guilty of judging Shane, and a number of other high profile sports people, for dressing in a trendy way, for presenting with an expensive looking bouffant, for not being able to grow a beard, for lacking perhaps the qualities that the grizzled and hardened players of yesteryear shared, for drinking white wine spritzas after winning Test matches, for enjoying a chai latte.

This is where society has taken us and young men have changed. They look good. They are groomed. Don’t judge and lash out at them for being better looking than you.

After all that, Shane does seems to deliver us plenty of fodder for ridicule: his body language suggests that he needs to poop a lot, he wrote an autobiography half way through his career, he could play He-Man in any Masters of the Universe stage production, he does cry a lot, and when he’s not crying he looks like he is going to cry, and all importantly he has enraged us and become the butt of our jokes by reviewing pretty much every dismissal he was ever involved in.

And this goes against the sense of team we have been taught from day one of our upbringing around Australian team sports. Team first.

Brett Geeves: Don’t judge Shane Watson for being better looking than you. Source: AP

To be honest, writing about my old mate Ben Hilfenhaus was easy. Hilf is a lad and we enjoyed a lot of funny times together being 19 year olds that made mistakes.

My time with Watto was different and I look back on it and wish that I had learnt from him, rather than attempted to mock him for his commitment to becoming a better player and wearing the occasional turtle neck.

Too often we align ourselves with the loveable rogue. Look at Fev. Warney. You are saying to yourself right now, “Love to have a beer with Fev and Warney, and Roy Symonds, geez they’d have some tales”.

If you don’t already, now is the time to embrace and respect the way Watto represented our country. He made decisions that were aligned to his goal of playing for Australia.

As far as business models goes; his is a sound one. And his achievements have been earned through an unrelenting desperation and drive for success and the highest honours.

Remember his Australian career as one of the great eras for cricket in the nation. Shane was a key contributor throughout and he departs the international scene as one of the greats.