There is a photo from the 2018 Sydney second grade final of Jack Maddocks and Angus Crichton hoisting up Easts fullback Will Maddocks with the premiership shield.

That image was circulated widely that afternoon, mainly for the fact that Jack and Crichton were down supporting club rugby.

But for the two famous blokes, the significance of the moment was all about the guy up on their shoulders. Jack’s older brother Will.

“Growing up Will and I spent hours at Easts,” Jack recalls.

“We'd go there almost every day after school and stay until after first grade finished training and kick the footy around.

"We'd ball boy fourths to first grade on Saturday and then stay at the clubhouse until 10 or 11 on Saturday night and we just loved it.

“We thought we were so cool hanging out with those guys.

“Our older brothers played there - our biggest concern on a Saturday was how Easts went. It wasn't how Scots went, it wasn't how the Wallabies went, wasn't how any Super Rugby team went.”

So for Will Maddocks to win a second-grade title was special on its own.

But the fact Will was out on a footy field at all meant more to the Maddocks family than any piece of silverware.

At 15, Will was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and had to undergo months of gruelling cancer treatment.

Hospital-bound or at home recovering between treatments, the once-sporty kid was suddenly unable to spend much time at the club, or play any kind of sport.

But when Easts made the grand final that year, in 2009, they made an exception.

“Will and I were ball boys but I was ball-boying by myself for the back end of the year when Will was sick,” Jack recalls.

“Easts second grade made the grand final that year and the finals used to be at the SFS back in the day.

"But Will was one of his weeks when he was out of hospital so they actually asked him to run the team out in second grade.

“We've got a photo at home when he was like 40kg with no hair running out the team.

"To see him 10 or 11 years later, playing for second grade in a grand final, winning was pretty cool.”

Easts second grade wouldn’t make another grand final until 2018.

The Maddocks brothers are typical siblings in that they both admit they rarely dish out praise to each other in person.

But scratch the surface - and get them alone - and the pride in one another’s achievements is obvious.

Jack has enjoyed a spectacular rise in recent years through club rugby, Super Rugby and into the Wallabies.

But he says he takes far greater pride in Will’s unseen achievements than in his own success.

“Those little things which a lot of other people might not realise - he's not playing for the Wallabies or anything - but to our family that (Grand Final moment) was a really significant thing,” Jack says.

“I was more proud of seeing that than I have been for myself in any achievement I've had.”

Jack, 22, and Will, 24, are the youngest of four boys, with older brothers James, 29, and Tim, 27.

The four often played two on two rugby growing up, with youngest Jack and oldest James teaming up.

Jack says he was never the one tipped for stardom in the family. That was Will.

“There's no doubt growing up - speak to any of our brothers or parents, when we used to play in the backyard, Will was always the one,” he says.

“He was always the best out of all of us. I think I was never really better than him, I was always just a bit bigger.

“He's got a lot more talent than a lot of people I've seen play at the highest level.

“He is genuinely one of the most gifted people I've played with but he's just had so many roadblocks along the way.”

Will and Jack shared a room together for most of their childhood, and brother Tim still jokingly refers to them as the “twins”.

“We always lived together in the same room, even though there was a spare room in the house. We just liked it,” Will recalls.

“I can remember we always stayed up, playing game boy or something at night next to each other and then Mum would come in and tell us to go to bed and we'd be like "We've been asleep the whole time".

“We always got on really well me and Jack. Jack's big and I was a very late developer.

“So, Jack was about my size most of growing up. A lot of people used to think we were twins anyway.”

When Will was 15, he began suffering from watery eyes and a lump appeared in his inner eye.

Will was prescribed antibiotic drops for what was thought to be an eye infection but after the lump kept growing, a doctor suggested it might be something more serious.

“Originally it was like a little ball in (my inner eye) and Mum thought it might be a blocked tear duct or something and we went to the GP and they said, “try these ointments, try this,' didn't work,” Will says.

“And then, it started hurting as well. It got to a decent size, maybe like a five cent coin in there.

“Basically we saw a lot of specialists to try and figure out what it was and then ended up getting a biopsy on it. This was all while I was completely oblivious, I had no idea.

“I remember it was in school holidays and having to sit in all these doctors places ad I thought it was fine and I was like, "can we just go home?’.”

Will moved schools at this time, to Scots College in Sydney. At the end of his first week, the results of his biopsy came back: Will had non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

“I'd been two days at my new school and then I didn't go back for six months or something,” he said.

Will went straight into a brutal run of treatment with one week in hospital and two weeks at home. Luckily, non-Hodgkins lymphoma is one of the more treatable forms of cancer but five-year survival rates are still only 70 per cent.

Parents Peter and Bronwyn stayed with Will in hospital and the family tried to keep things as close to normal as possible.

“It was definitely a tough time but I was almost a little bit oblivious to it in general, just being a bit younger,” Will says.

“I didn't realise until after when I spoke to them but I didn't fully realise the effect it really had on the rest of the family.

“They were pretty rattled which, looking back now, of course they would be."

When Will was at home, it was Xbox and watching TV with his brothers.

“We'd obviously go visit him a fair bit in those weeks he was in the hospital but when he was at home, we'd just try and be normal,” Jack says.

“There was no more knee rugby but it was just watching TV, playing Xbox, just being normal kids.

“I think the best thing to do, especially when you don't know what the outcome's going to be, it was all about just enjoying the time we had together.”

It wasn’t so much the scheduled hospital visits that hit Will the hardest but the unexpected trips back to the ward when he picked up what would be a regulation cold for most teenagers.

“Most of the time you end up coming back in because you have no immune system,” Will said.

“You end up getting sore throats and ear infections and I remember those easily being the most demoralising things because you'd finally get to go home and then all of a sudden you'd have to go back in with a sore throat and you can't eat.

"That was probably the worst part.”

Always a small teenager, most of Will’s energy was often focused on keeping his weight above 31kg to avoid having to switch to eating through a tube.

“Eating was really bad and you were always really nauseous and your taste buds and stuff, they mess with you a lot,” he said.

"I remember just having a hard time with it but I had to keep my weight up otherwise I'd get a feeding tube. I was desperate not to get a feeding tube.

“I think I went in at about 34kg when I was 15, so I was already tiny and I was not allowed to drop below 31 or I had to get a feeding tube, so I was hanging tough.”

When they weren’t at school, the boys would visit Will and Jack says he saw strength in his brother he hadn’t known before.

“I remember it used to be so hard watching Will in the hospital,” Jack said.

“All his life he absolutely hated getting needles and then he had to get at least a needle everyday, it went on forever and forever.

“It was so hard for him but what I felt a lot of appreciation for through it is just how tough people are who go through those illnesses."

Sport was well down the list of priorities for the Maddocks family during Will’s treatment.

But Will remembers having the lure of playing rugby again in the back of his mind.

“I definitely always was keen to get back to playing footy, I always loved it,” he says.

“For some weird reason I remember reading this Matt Giteau article when I was in hospital and being, not inspired exactly, but I think it made me want to get back into it and really excited to do it.

“I wasn't in a huge rush but I was always keen to play when I finished school and play for Easts.”

Will went into remission after roughly five rounds of treatment and while the tick of good health was a major relief for the family, it was the day to day improvements that Jack treasured.

“Before Will got sick he had really long blonde straight hair and then his hair started to grow back,” Jack says.

"He got a bit of a nickname all his friends called him “Sheep head”, because he had like brown really, really curly hair."

“It was just really great to see those small signs of life like growing hair, all that sort of stuff.

“Even things like walking home or getting the bus home by yourself, when Will was sick, it just wasn't what it used to be, you know?”

“It's not like when he got in remission it was straight away like, “Alright let's go play footy”.

“I think when something like that happens, rugby is the furthest thing from your mind.

“That completely goes out the window, it's purely from more an emotional point of view, it hits you really hard and any sport or anything is the last thing that comes across your mind, it's just purely their health and also their happiness."

Will passed an important milestone in 2015, with a five-year remission period finishing, but he says he still has to be careful when it comes to his health.

Somewhere along the way Will pulled out his footy boots again and slowly, got back into rugby. He played in the 10th XV in year 12 - and loved it.

A return to the familiar world of Woollahra Oval with Easts followed, and starting with colts thirds, Will had several seasons working through the grades at the Beasties, eventually earning a first grade debut.

That talent on display in the Maddocks backyard began to show itself again and in 2017, with younger brother Jack flying and having been contracted by the Rebels , the Australian sevens program began to take an interest in Will.

He was invited down to train with the wider squad but injury derailed that chance.

A year later and on the eve of a move to Hong Kong - with that second grade Grand Final run and won - Will reached out to the Aussie sevens staff to see if there was still any interest.

No regrets.

“I was interviewing for that job (in Hong Kong) and I was just thinking about playing footy as well and I thought if I left with the Olympics coming up, it'd probably be hard to work my way back,” he says.

“I did some internal trials, played the first Queensland Premier Rugby Sevens with an Australian Barbarians team and then they put three of us from that into the Sevens squad.”

Nine years after being struck down with a life-threatening illness - and struggling to stay above 31 kilograms - Will Maddocks had himself a development contract with the Australian Sevens team.

“Coming into a full-time program was very different but at the same time it was good,” he said.

“I get to do rugby, which I'd be doing anyway, but I get to do it as a job.”

Will has been training with the Aussie squad since late 2018 and while he hasn't made a debut, he's getting field time where he can.

Will has just returned from the Hong Kong Tens having played with the Classic Wallabies, alongside Stephen Larkham and Wendell Sailor, in the invitational tournament that runs alongside the World Series event.

It’s a remarkable story for Will to have come so far.

Jack is confident Will has the talent to take his Sevens journey to the next level, but whatever happens, he’s just grateful to have his “twin” brother around.

“Even though Will's just normal, every now and again for some random reason you'll just think "Wow, imagine”,” Jack says.

“It could've been so much worse, or imagine if things had gone the other way, how different my life would be.

“You just have to remind yourself.

"It's unreal things turned out the way they did.”