Look again at the 1917 First Eleven photograph — the one where Otto Nothling sits at the far right of the front row. The boy seated in the centre, holding the captaincy, is T. "Tommy" Lawton. One school cricket team, photographed on an ordinary day in 1917, holding two future internationals in a single frame.
Lawton was the all-rounder's all-rounder. The magazine of his era records him as School Captain in 1917, champion swimmer and athlete, captain of the cricket XI — the boy the School pointed to. What Grammar saw first, Australia saw next: Lawton became one of the great Wallaby fly halves, a ball-playing No. 10 across 44 Tests in the 1920s, and one of the seven BGS Old Boys to captain Australia — a tally no other GPS school has matched.
The 1917 First Eleven. Standing: Gibbs (scorer), Anderson, Leslie, Macdonnell, Millar, T. G., Charity. Sitting: Grenning, Boyce, Atthow, Lawton (Captain), Biggs, Darvall, Nothling. Source: Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1917, p.19 (photo by Fegan).
And the name did not stop with him. His grandson Tom Lawton Jr hooked for the Wallabies through the 1980s, and another grandson, Rob Lawton, propped his way to a Wallaby debut against England in 1988. Three Wallabies across three generations, all threading back to the boy in the centre of a 1917 school photograph.
That is what an archive is for. A century on, the frame still holds them.
Sources: School Magazine transcripts (1917: School Captain, champion swimmer and athlete; 1918: "last year's captain"); BGS Wallaby Captains & Rugby Greats; the 1917 First Eleven plate (Magazine, November 1917, p.19).
See also: Otto Nothling — the man who replaced Bradman · the 1917 Magazine in the archive.