Some Old Boys earn a line in the record books. Otto Nothling earned one nobody else in cricket history can claim: he is the only man ever to replace Don Bradman in a Test side.
It happened in the 1928–29 Ashes summer. Bradman, then a 20-year-old with one Test behind him, was dropped for the Second Test at Sydney, and the selectors called in the Queensland all-rounder Otto Nothling. Bradman was never dropped again in a 20-year Test career, which is what makes Nothling's distinction permanent. No one else will ever hold it.
Cricket was only half the story. Nothling was a genuine dual international in an era that produced few of them: nineteen rugby Tests for Australia between 1921 and 1924 as a fullback with a prodigious boot, alongside his first-class cricket for New South Wales and Queensland. Those who saw him at Brisbane Grammar School rated him the finest all-round athlete the School had produced, a judgement that has survived a century of challengers.
His name sits early in both of the School's great cap rolls. He entered BGS in 1914, and by 1919 he was in the 1st XI — cap number 8 on a roll that now runs to more than 800 names.
The Grammar thread did not end with him. His son, Dr Martin Nothling '58, followed him through the School, and the family's story reached full circle at the 2025 President's Drinks, when Dr Nothling gave the tribute to his father before the assembled Old Boys, a century and a decade after Otto first walked through the gates.
Sources: OBA records; Otto Nothling — Draft Biography (OBA story library); BGS Wallaby Captains & Rugby Greats; BGS 1st XI Cricket cap roll (cap 8, 1919); School Magazine registers (1972, 1983).
See also: BGS 1st XI Cricket Caps, 1919–2018 · BGS Wallaby Captains & Rugby Greats
The 1917 First Eleven. Standing: Gibbs (scorer), Anderson, Leslie, Macdonnell, Millar, T. G., Charity. Sitting: Grenning, Boyce, Atthow, Lawton (Captain), Biggs, Darvall, Nothling. Otto Nothling is seated at the far right of the front row; the captain, Tom Lawton (seated centre), went on to captain the Wallabies, so the photograph holds two future internationals in one frame. *Source: Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1917, p.19 (photo by Fegan). *