The Leyland Brothers have got nothing on Lee Watts
Brad Murphy | June 10, 2023
How far would you travel for a game of cricket?
Would a 29 hour round trip every weekend be out of the question?
Not for Lee Watts from Guthalungra in North Queensland which is in between the townships of Home Hill and Bowen. Guthalungra is where he and his mum Joanne run the family’s Brahman cattle station along with their earthmoving business.
Now Lee is not your average cricket fanatic. He is a full-on committed disciple of the game whose late father Harold sparked his interest in the sport from an early age and must indeed be watching from a clubhouse in the sky very proud of his son’s commitment.
Harold himself was a keen cricketer who in his junior days attended the legendary Gabba Cricket Coaching Camps run by Sam Trimble and Brian Gaskell at the iconic Gabba where young country cricketers would board in the old grandstands and attend the 5-day camps. Harold made good friends and forged a lifelong relationship with the game that he be passed onto his only son Lee.
One of the friends was John Bell who was then and still is one of Queensland’s leading coaches.
The Watts family first met Bell at the Whitsunday Sevens carnival in Proserpine which was an annual event on the North Qld cricket calendar in which a Queensland Old Boys teams always entered. John Bell was a former First Class wicketkeeper/batsman for Tasmania and Queensland and also a former Qld coach who had much success winning premierships with several clubs in the Brisbane grade competition in the 70s and 80s. Belly then inherited Lee as a student when Lee was a teenager and encouraged him to develop his allround cricket skills as a base for his love of the game.
Lee who is now 34 years of age had a goal to play grade cricket in Brisbane so at 18 he packed his bags and came down to the city for the summer and began playing for Redbank Plains ( also known as Eastern Raiders ) in the Ipswich Cricket Association competition. He would stay with Bell and his wife Kay at their Goodna home and have sessions with John whilst playing club cricket in Ipswich until he thought he was ready to play grade cricket in Brisbane.
Bell was a great mentor and encouraged Lee not only in his cricket skills but also leadership skills which would serve him well in both sport and life. They have had many net sessions in the Wolston Park nets over the years since.
For the next two seasons, Lee joined the Toombul club where he played in their 6th grade side as he developed his game and he also continued to play for Redbank on Sundays. He couldn’t get enough cricket! During this time he embarked on a tour of Sri Lanka with Baba Sourjah’s Moreton Cricket Club that he enjoyed.
In the year’s ahead two things of magnitude occurred for Lee. One of which sadly was the passing of his father Harold, who had developed cancer and despite fighting the good fight left us in 2015. Harold was a fantastic man who was always smiling and he really loved the fact that his son was a cricket tragic just like himself!
The other significant event was Lee’s joining the Wanderers Cricket Club. The Wanderers is an old club whose charter is to take the game and foster it in the schools and the regional areas. There were plenty of midweek games and an annual tour and that meant Lee was on board!
In those days the legendary leader of the club was Lew Cooper and given people of such reliability are few and far between, Lew was happy to sign the young North Queenslander up. Since then Lee has been on nine country tours and served on the committee leading to recently being inducted as a Life Member of the club.
Before committing to come to the city and again during the 4 years Harold was fighting his illness, Lee was playing his cricket in Home Hill on Saturdays and Bowen on Sundays as well as playing competitive hockey and tennis in both Bowen and Townsville. After Harold’s passing is when this story goes to another level as this is when Lee began his full-on sponsorship of the fuel companies.
The necessity for Lee to operate the family business was obvious so home remained Guthalungra and his love affair with the Bruce Highway began in earnest as he travelled back on most weekends of the summer to play firstly for Ipswich Jets and Marburg Thunder until he got an opportunity to play with the Ipswich Hornets in the QCA grade competition in season 2017/18 where he eventually rose to play 3rd grade with some appearances in the 2nds.
On Friday mornings armed with the odd box of Bowen in season mangoes he would hand them out to his mates each trip and whenever possible would find a game to play on Sundays somewhere in South East Qld before returning home on Mondays. If the Wanderers played a midweek game he would stay and play if he could juggle things on the property. Many times his mum Joanne would join him on the trips for the company.
I love recounting the story of when he drove down on a Friday to play a grade game for Hornets on Saturday before driving back to Bowen through the night to play a hockey final on Sunday then got back into his car and drove back to Limestone Park, Ipswich for a T20 fixture on the Monday evening for Marburg Thunder. Absolutely unbelievable!
I often thought that it would be good for an airline to sponsor such a committed person as an act of goodwill as I can honestly say I have never encountered an individual as keen as Lee. His fuel expenses must be seriously high during summer!
Given the fact that the Hornets are now only fielding First and Second Grade teams this summer, Lee is currently back playing in the north with the occasional trip down with his mangoes to play Wanderers fixtures but I imagine that he will return in the future.
Any airlines out there?
