Donald Hamilton : Rugby Player

Dolphin · Oct 28, 2009

This is one of a series of posts to mark the international Rugby players who served in, and survived, The Great War. If anyone has further information on the men concerned, I’d be most grateful if it could be added to the thread.

Gareth

Hamilton, Donald Cameron played for New Zealand

Internationals: 1 : 1908 AW=

Donald Hamilton was born on 19 January 1883, in Invercargill.

Played as a Flanker for: Southland Boys’ High School, Pirates, Southland, South Island

Profession: Chemist

War service: 3/3778 Corporal, NZ Medical Corps

Remarks: His International was his sole match for the All Blacks. He was banned sine die by Southland RFU after participating in a Rugby League exhibition match with his Rugby Union club Pirates v Britannia RLFC in 1909. Captained Southland cricket 1910-1911; nominated for NZ 1914.

He died on 14 April 1925 in Invercargill

liverpool annie · Oct 28, 2009

Don Hamilton

Few cases illustrate better some of the pedantic and arrogant administration which all too often has bedeviled rugby than that of a young Southland forward, Don Hamilton, who senselessly was, in effect, drummed out of the game in his mid 20s and still in his playing prime.

One of the first in a long line of superb loose forwards who have been produced from Southland, Hamilton had three distinguished seasons in the representative side between 1906 and 1908.

In his last season he played so well for Southland against the touring Anglo Welsh he made the South Island team and was called into the All Black second test, along with several other newcomers, for the second test against the Anglo Welsh at Athletic Park.

It was to be his only test but his international career was not terminated necessarily because of any concern over his performance. Before he could be considered for the third test he and another Southlander, Ned Hughes, were ruled out because of a dispute in which their respective clubs, Pirates and Britannia, became involved with the Southland Union.

Because of the state of the pitch and concerns over the weather, with Invercargill being hit by a blizzard, the two teams refused to play their match and for what was construed as "striking" all of the players, including Hamilton and Hughes, were suspended.

The saga of petty officialdom at its irrational worst did not end there. The players from each club agreed to play a benefit match under the new Northern union, or rugby league, rules.

That resulted early in 1909 in the New Zealand Rugby Union decreeing that any player who had played any game under the "Northern" rules was to be regarded as a a professional and was to be expelled.

Despite the protests from the Southland union that such a decree would cause damage to the game in the area the NZRU declined to reconsider and as a result one club, Britannia, went into recess and Hamilton was lost to the game.

He then turned his attention to his other sporting passion, cricket. He was Southland's first captain in a Hawke Cup match and was a talented batsman with centuries to his credit at minor representative level. Hamilton was nominated for the 1914 New Zealand cricket team.

It is difficult for anyone, especially from a distance of nearly 100 years, not to sympathise with Hamilton and the treatment he received or to disagree with his own assessment. He told a press interviewer at the time: "The trouble is, in my view, that the NZRFU has, in its zeal to suppress the Northern union game, made victims of the Southland players, who at bottom have no sympathy with the laws which govern the game."
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Lindsay Knight

Not a very good photo .... but .... !

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Donald Hamilton : Rugby Player

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