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The old AFL Historical Statistics site had this back in the day:
AF.com and AFL Tables have the same DOB, so it seems someone changed it on Wikipedia for whatever reason:
On Ancestry this seems to be him (ignore the USA bit!):
That matches the DOD AF.com has, though obviously the spelling of the last name is out by a bit.
It looks like he was recruited to Essendon from Footscray Juniors, and this is probably him changing clubs only a few days before he debuted for Essendon (18 May 1918):
There were Sauer brothers at Footscray Juniors in early-May 1918: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/88797515
This is probably him at Yarraville in 1916:
He may have gone back to Footscray after playing those games early in 1918 for Essendon:
This has H. Sauer set to play a game for Williamstown (VFA) in 1920: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69689071
An Ancestry tree has this note for Henry Joseph Sauer:
He had a brother, William Clifford, and he might be the W. Sauer seen above, and he also could have been at Essendon at one stage:
VFA Project has that player as Saurer (North Melbourne 1920-21).
It's very likely to be the brother of the Essendon 1918 player.
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This matches the person the Wiki page has:
He was married at Numurkah in 1916:
He was living with his wife at Cobram in 1919, and it looks likely that he spent his entire life in country Victoria.
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Meanwhile, Henry Joseph/Joseph Henry//Sauer/Sawyer (and his family) have the perfect background for him to have played for Yarraville Juniors, Footscray Juniors and Essendon! It just might be that he called himself Sawyer at the time he was playing football, otherwise it's hard to know why he's known by that name in the game's records. It's also hard to know why someone changed the details on his Wiki page, as they do appear to be wrong!
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