AS CARLTON'S latest father-son draftee Lucas Camporeale readies for his much-anticipated first senior appearance at the MCG on Thursday night, an historic photograph of the game’s first father-son recruit has surfaced after almost 75 years.

The image, captured by the noted photographer Charle Boyles of Inverness Street, Brunswick, features the Carlton senior 20 (plus one) in front of the since-demolished Robert Heatley Stand, moments before the first bounce of the Round 8 match with Collingwood on Saturday, June 16, 1951. It was one of four Boyles photos and a catalogue of club periodicals recently donated to by Ballarat resident Richard Carthew, who insisted “It’s my pleasure to add a little more to Carlton’s rich history”.

Pictured standing in his club dressing to the far left in the back row of the ’51 team photograph is 20 year-old Harvey Laurence Dunn – the 20th man in the Carlton team captained by Ern Henfry and featuring the vice captain Ken Hands and 1947 Brownlow Medallist Bert Deacon.

Dunn and the 19th man Don Calder were promoted to the seniors at the expense of Doug Guy and the injured Arthur Hodgson, who nevertheless appears in the back row of the pre-match photo, sixth from the left, with a guernsey draped over his business shirt.

Dunn, who died in 2013 at the age of 81, had originally been residentially tied to North Melbourne, but the new rule allowed him to further the Carlton tradition set by his father Harvey Louis Dunn in 71 senior appearances between 1924 and 1929.

Dunn the younger was officially cleared to play for Carlton’s senior team in accordance with the newly-introduced father-son rule (eligibility was then 50 games-plus) on May 11, 1951. Next came Melbourne’s Ronald Dale Barassi (March 15, 1953); South Melbourne’s Hugh McLaughlin and Bob Pratt junior (April 15, 1953); Carlton’s NW Huxtable (April 17, 1953); and Fitzroy’s James Chapman (March 31, 1954), whose fathers all represented their respective clubs with great distinction.

In an interview with this reporter back in 2008, Dunn set the record straight on his unique place in football history.

“Many years ago there was an article in the paper that Ron Barassi was the first player recruited under the rule, but I was in fact the first. I also dispute the above date my clearance came through and I’ll tell you why,” Harvey said at the time.

“When the under 19s were up and running I was residentially bound to North because I lived in Flemington. I wanted to go to Carlton because of Dad so I applied for a clearance from North, but they wouldn’t give me one. Instead they asked me to train and I trained there for one night in 1949, but I didn’t want to go to North because I was Carlton-mad.“Now my father knew there was a father-son ruling being considered at the League, so he advised that instead of me going to North in ’49 that I play for Box Hill, then in the Eastern District Football League.

“During that year the League brought in the father-son rule, so in 1950 I transferred to Carlton and won the best and fairest in the thirds. I also played in the 1951 and ’53 reserve grade Grand Finals and we won them both.

“When I first went there Perc Bentley was coach of the seniors, Mick Price the reserves and Jim Francis the thirds. My Dad coached Box Hill in ’49 when I was there waiting for this clearance and he later got an offer to coach the Carlton thirds, which he did from 1953 to ’55. I know the thirds got beaten by a point in a Grand Final one year and I also know that Dick Pratt was playing when Dad coached.”

Dunn’s links with Carlton were territorial, as his father settled within the shadows of the old Princes Park on his return from The Great War. As he said: “Dad was a butcher who lived at 361 Pigdon Street North Carlton, near Bowen Crescent, about a three-iron from the ground, and I was actually born in the front room of that house”.

“My family was in Carlton for the first 18 months of my life, but these were Depression days and, unlike today, there wasn’t much welfare,” he said. “So families who couldn’t buy a house were faced with an opportunity to rent a property in Flemington, because things were pretty tough.”

Though the Dunn clan later relocated to Flemington, Harvey maintained the historic connection established by the old man almost 30 years before.

“As a young kid, I used to hear the roar of the crowd, and when I went to Flemington I still walked up past the zoo to go to the Carlton ground,” Harvey said.

It is truly hoped that Lucas Camporeale’s on-field career at Carlton will transcend Dunn’s return of nine senior matches through four seasons – but Harvey Laurence Dunn will be forever remembered as the first League footballer acquired under a much admired football law.