THIS week one young man will have his face splashed all over the newspapers and TV as the No.1 draft pick.

It will be a surreal experience for whoever Melbourne names first up on Thursday and my advice to him is not to take any notice of the flood of publicity that will come his way.

It is hard to think that it is eight years now since the Hawks called my name out in the 2001 draft.

As soon as that happened, the club looked after me and told me not to worry about any expectations the media might be putting on me.

There was no certainty that the Hawks were going to take me. Luke Ball was bandied about as the potential No.1 pick that year and the club put plenty of research into who to take out of Bally, myself and Chris Judd.

There were a few tests I had to go through because they said it was down to us three.

I had osteitis pubis and only played about six or eight games in the under-18s with the Geelong Falcons. I played three or four early on and then came back and played the last couple of finals.

I had a fair few check-ups in the lead-up and I got a call from Hawthorn the night before the draft. They said nothing was concrete but at that stage they were going to take me with pick one.

As a kid you are not really worried who you get drafted to. I was just rapt that I was going to get picked up and play football. To stay in Melbourne near my family and friends was great. When they told me, I was happy but until your name is read out you can't get too excited about it.

Naturally I was nervous for myself as well as my teammates at the Geelong Falcons. There were a few fellas from the Falcons who were drafted that year and I was stoked to see Jimmy Bartel, Luke Molan, Gary Ablett and Matt Maguire all get taken.

None of them went to Hawthorn so I was pretty much starting from scratch.

I had played in the under-18s Vic Country squad with Rick Ladson who came at the same time as me but I didn't really know too many others who were already at the club.

The club was very good but you had to earn your respect from the players. The blokes who were there like Mark Graham, Ben Dixon and Johnny Barker had to earn their stripes so I needed to prove myself to them before I got their respect.

As it happened, Bally, Juddy and I were compared to each other for the first few years of our careers.

You don't hear about it as much these days but it's always going to be there until our careers are over. Juddy winning a Brownlow in his third season might have turned that up a bit but the club always told me not to worry about any comparisons.

The attention on early picks seemed to go up a notch in 2009 when Jack Watts made his debut for Melbourne.

The scrutiny on Jack was pretty harsh but that is the way footy is headed these days because there are so many people covering the game.

It is unfortunate for the young guys to have so much pressure put on them but Jack is going to be a ripping player and I think he'll cope alright.

There will always pressure on the No.1 draft pick. You always want to play good footy and a few of the other guys taken early were playing seniors early on in my first year. I was just trying to get my body right to play good footy.

But again, all you can worry about is your own performance and if you are doing the right thing for your team. There is no point worrying about what other people at other clubs are doing.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.