Otto Lather

Born at Eagle Farm in Brisbane in 1863, he played for the Brisbane club and represented the State in the 1880s when Queensland clashed with visiting teams from South Melbourne and Melbourne. Years later, after the game’s revival in 1903, he played for the newly-formed Ipswich club before stamping his real mark on the code as an administrator.

He was a pioneer of schoolboy football, presiding over the Schools League for a number of years before World War I. He was headmaster at Rocklea State School, and in 1911 he managed the first Queensland State School team to tour New South Wales. He formed a great rivalry with J.R. Loney, a teacher at Taringa State School at a time when Rocklea and Taringa were the mainstays of the important cog in the development of the code prior to the mid-1920s. Was Secretary of the Queensland Football League for a number of years just before and during the war, also holding the position of Treasurer in 1912-13.

He was the driving force behind a young Rocklea team being admitted to the senior ranks of the League in 1913, holding secretary and treasurer positions at that club. When Collingwood, Perth, Cananore (Tasmania) and South Adelaide travelled to Brisbane for a ground-breaking carnival in 1914, he was the QFL Secretary. In the early to mid-1920s, he again filled the role of President of the Schools League, and was granted life membership of the League in 1919. He passed away in 1948.