PICTURED in front of the padre, nursing the football marked “RAAF 1942” between his crossed legs, is the former Geelong and Carlton rover Jim Knight.

Knight was one of 19 past and present League players photographed for posterity in their Big V guernseys at the Punt Road Oval 82 years ago. Tragically he would lose his life just 14 months later - the only member of the RAAF team to lose his life in wartime.

The photo is thought to have been taken by Charles Boyles in front of the soon-to-be-demolished Jack Dyer Stand, on the afternoon of Sunday 16 August 1942 – prior to the first bounce of the Grand Final of the wartime Inter-Services Competition between the RAAF and Motor Division.

More than 20,000 people attended the match, amongst them the Federal Minister of Air Arthur Drakeford, the Minister for the Army (and future Australian Prime Minister) Frank Forde and several officers of the high command.

Featured in this team are the RAAF’s senior 18 (plus 19th man) are some of League football’s all-time greats – South Melbourne’s Bob Pratt (then with Coburg), Collingwood’s Ron Todd (then with Williamstown) and Alby Pannam, Fitzroy’s Frank Curcio (the RAAF team captain) and Len Smith, Melbourne’s Eric ‘Tarzan’ Glass, and Footscray’s Jim Thoms.

Knight is one of three Carlton players pictured in the RAAF team photo, together with Arthur Sleith and George Bailey.

Sleith, born in  Murtoa, had already enlisted with the RAAF when he was recruited to Carlton from VFA Club Preston, which went into wartime recess from late 1941.

He managed just five senior appearances for the Blues between 1942 and ’43 before heading to Darwin, where he served for the duration of the war with an aircraft recovery unit, locating and transporting crashed or damaged aeroplanes to repair depots. Corporal Sleith was ultimately discharged a few months after the war ended in August 1945, and on his return resolved to end his playing career where it had begun, with Preston.

Bailey, as with his fellow West Australian Ern Henfry, completed a relatively brief but significant on-field career at Carlton through the dark years of wartime. On the end of two seasons with the club in 1941 and ’42, Bailey returned to Perth whilst training with the RAAF, and in 1945 took out the Sandover Medal for the WAFL competition’s fairest and best.

At war’s end, Bailey stood out of football for 12 months to win a clearance back to Carlton – and in 1947 was rewarded with Grand Final victory when the Blues pipped Essendon by one glorious point.

In 1948, after the Round 8 match with Richmond, Bailey resolved to return to the west - and there he completed four years loyal service with the Redlegs before hanging up the boots forever.

For the record, the RAAF prevailed by 23 points in the Grand Final, 18.19 (127) to 16.8 (104), against a Motors outfit which included Richmond’s Bill Morris (later the 1948 Brownlow Medallist), South Melbourne’s Terry Cashion (a Tasmanian football icon), Footscray’s future captain Harry Hickey and Carlton’s premiership backmen Frank Gill and Ollie Grieve.

Entry to the game was by souvenir program, the Royal Australian Navy Band played, and a total of £564 in patriotic funds was raised through the sale of programs and donations.

A mounted copy of this photograph was later presented to the acclaimed aviator Group-Capt. Charles Eaton OBE as a token of esteem.

Jim Knight’s short life was bookended by two World Wars either side of The Great Depression. His story is featured as follows – appropriately enough in the lead-up to the ANZAC Round match involving the League teams Knight represented, Geelong and Carlton.

It is approaching 80 years to the day since Knight’s wartime tragedy brought both clubs closer together. It happened on the afternoon of Saturday 6 June 1944, on the occasion of Carlton’s Round 6 match with the Cats at Kardinia Park, when the Geelong Vice-President Councillor Drew accepted a magnificent perpetual trophy - the Jim Knight Memorial Cup - donated by members of the Carlton committee in honour of the man.

Born in Geelong in 1918, James Bell Knight was a solidly built and tenacious rover/forward recruited to Geelong from Geelong Scouts on the eve of the 1939 season.

Aged 21 at the time, Knight quite literally found his feet in senior League competition - and in three seasons with the Cats strung together 42 matches and booted 54 goals. By then he’d commanded the respect of his peers, and it was of no surprise to anyone that he was identified as a future Geelong captain in the making.

Then in October 1941, amid the darkest days of the Second World War, Geelong declared that it would go into recession until war’s end. As a consequence, all Geelong players were free to join other League teams until such time as the Cats once again fielded teams of their own.

Though Knight had already volunteered for active service with the Royal Australian Air Force prior to Geelong’s withdrawal, Carlton’s newly appointed Senior Coach Percy Bentley was an ardent admirer – and it was Bentley who convinced him to pull on the dark Navy Blue guernsey when military training allowed.

Wearing the No.11 for Carlton,  Knight turned out in 15 matches through seasons 1942 (when he earned the club’s award for Best Team Man) and 1943. His last on-field appearance for the Blues was at Toorak Park in the Round 5 contest with St Kilda - before he was posted to New Guinea to engage in the fierce battles with Japan. The Sporting Globe’s Chief Football Writer Hec de Lacey later reported: “During his military training little Jimmy Knight played many a fine game for the Blues. He was clean, and as fair as his hair”.

But Knight would never run out again - his short life ended on far away Goodenough Island to the east of the New Guinean mainland.

On 11 October 1943, Flying Officer James Bell Knight, then 25, was piloting a Douglas Boston bomber on a test flight when the bombs aboard the aircraft exploded after the nosewheel tyre blew out during take-off. Knight’s crew – Flight Sergeant Thompson and Leading Aircraftman McGlade - both survived the accident, but Jim’s body was found at the controls. To the end he tried to lift the plane.

Knight was laid to rest at the Bomana War Cemetery in Port Moresby. He is one of the 3069 known and 237 unknown Australians soldiers, sailors and airmen buried there. The epitaph on his headstone simply reads: “Hallowed Memories, His Love Will Live”.

Geelong’s inaugural winner of the Jim Knight Memorial Cup was Jim Munday jnr, who was declared the club’s best and fairest player at the end of the 1944 season – and for the next 30 years the club’s subsequent winners were similarly acknowledged with the awarding of Jim Knight’s trophy.

At Carlton, the captain and ’44 Best and Fairest Bob Chitty was presented with the Jim Park Memorial Cup - in honour of the club’s Premiership full-back Jim Park, who died at the hands of the Japanese in New Guinea just eight months before Flying Officer Knight.

Through season ’44, Chitty had excelled at full-back -  a position so capably filled by Park in his 128 senior appearances for the old dark Navy Blues.

Jim Park’s daughter Joan was just two years old when she lost her father, so has no memory of him. But on Anzac Day 2015, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, Joan unveiled this memorial stone to the two Jims - Park and Knight - and the 15 other Carlton footballers lost in wartime.

On that same occasion, the then Carlton captain Marc Murphy accepted a Lone Pine seedling from a member of the Australian Army. That seedling, now a tree, stands tall by the main entrance to IKON Park, as a living memorial to those who gave their tomorrows so that we may have our today.