Many friends, colleagues, opponents, cricket greats and the rest have had their say. The most poignant contributions, surely, have come from his children.

Warne was a cricketing genius. He was a philanthropist. He was a media star. He was, clearly, globally connected, far more than most.

MEMORIAL

That was clear from the personages attendant or beamed in at the memorial. He was a rich man, a person of influence in powerful circles. He commanded attention from the political class, egregiously insinuating themselves at the memorial. He was, to re-coin the favoured cliché, “larger than life”.

But what came through, more than anything else, was his fatherhood.

Losing a father at 52 years for young adult children is beyond tragic. I lost my father at twenty.  What you lose is that ineffable gloriousness of an ongoing adult relationship with your beloved parents.

The chance to get past teenage angst and the silly issues that cause short term division. The opportunity for nostalgic banter related to growing up in a family.

Mark Twain quipped that his father was an idiot when he (Twain) was seventeen, and yet became a genius by the time Twain was twenty-four.

No such opportunities for endless and beautiful adult-to-adult relationships for the younger Warnes. The regurgitation of gentle in-house humour that only those present would ever get.

The Warne children, humbly and magnificently, recounted their lives as children of a doting father.

His attention to fatherhood, given his absences playing cricket and his, er, extra-marital affections, his ongoing global fame and fortune, and whirligig lifestyle, comes perhaps as a surprise to a public who assumed he was simply a famous bloke famous for being famous.

A bogan (Merv Hughes’ term) who got lucky. An unlikely model of fatherhood, you might think.

Not so. Shane’s relentless and legendary, regular communication with his children, often from afar, his attention to detail, his pride in his children and their progress, his unbelievable affection for them, and his family leadership, shone like a beacon.

DENIGRATION

It showed at the memorial service. He was, and is, a pretty good advertisement for fatherhood at a time of unmoored family life and the denigration of men.

Warne’s doting fatherhood in a contemporary world of fatherlessness is a teaching moment. Ironically, the recent publication of Troy Bramston’s “definitive” biography of Bob Hawke provides a less ideal model of fatherhood.

David Blankenhorn in his book, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (1995) addressed one of the most dire emergencies of our time.

He warned of the fate of societies which do not recognise the crisis of family life and act to correct it.

Countries like Poland and Hungary get it. We do not.

Our own Bettina Arndt has been an Australian warrior for fatherhood. She has been pilloried for her efforts.

Instead, we ignore this and focus on matters like gay rights and transgenderism.

Issues which are utterly peripheral and ideologically motivated and which affect only a tiny minority with a megaphone, while the social fabric of society is being crushed and is utterly ignored by the ruling class and by our elected representatives.

MISPLACED

In an era of rampant male careerism and misplaced values, it behoves us to reconsider the fact that the greatest aspiration of any young male should be to become a great father.

Yes, be a great leg spinner by all means, but never, ever forget your prime calling.

Males get a rough time these days. Aggro by the likes of Will Smith, clearly, does not help.

Shane Warne’s life as an exemplary father deserves our attention. His children used a global stage to make the point, even if this was not their intention.