After ignoring calls from his primary school friends to play Australian rules football (the leading winter sport in Adelaide), Lawrence began playing rugby league at the age of nine for the northern Adelaide based club Central Districts Roosters in the South Australian Rugby League [REF].
Brenton Lawrence was selected to the South Australian Under-15 team in the late 1990s, and in 2002 he toured England and France with the Australian Schoolboys while attending Erindale College in Canberra.