Sam Gravenall
Australian rules footballer and coach (1885-1948)
Samuel Boyd Gravenall (18 July 1885 – 8 March 1948), variously known as "Sam Gravenall" and "Boyd Gravenall", was an Australian rules footballer who played with St Kilda in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
Family
The son of Samuel Boyd Gravenall (1862–1941), and Ida Tily Gravenall (1868–1945), née Browne, Samuel Boyd Gravenall was born on 18 July 1885.
He married Jane "Jennie" Godolphin Oats (1888–1940), at Prahran, Victoria on 6 July 1910. They had three children: Betty (1913–), and Donald William Gravenall (1917–1990), who became a respected swimming coach, and Barbara Ida (1927–1956).
Education
He entered Melbourne's Wesley College at the age of 14, having won a Government scholarship.
Football
From Wesley College, Melbourne, Gravenall was a forward and had his first season at St Kilda in 1903. He didn't appear for the club again until 1906 and the following year went to Western Australia, who he represented at the inaugural Melbourne Carnival. After 41 games for North Fremantle he returned to Melbourne, where he was employed as a sports master at Wesley College. He played for St Kilda in 1910, and served as the team's captain.
Lawrence Adamson
Due to his strongly held views on the values inherent in amateur sport, and his disdain for the increasing professionalism of the Victorian Football League, Wesley's headmaster, Lawrence Adamson, who'd been educated at Rugby School in England, controversially refused to allow Gravenall to continue to play VFL football in 1911.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sam Gravenall” as australian rules footballer and coach (1885-1948). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian rules footballer and coach (1885-1948). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7407540. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1948, 1862 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sam Gravenall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.