Name Donald Hamilton | ||
Donald Cameron Hamilton (19 January 1883 – 14 April 1925) was a New Zealand rugby union player who represented the New Zealand national rugby union team.
Hamilton played one Test for New Zealand, against the Anglo-Welsh at Wellington in 1908.
He also appeared in one first-class cricket match for the Southland cricket team.
Hamilton was one of the principal players, along with fellow All Black Ned Hughes, in the saga of petty officialdom which marred both the Southland and eventually New Zealand unions in 1908–09. In 1908, when he was captain of the Pirates club, he was suspended by the Southland Rugby Union for striking along with the rest of his team and the opposition, Hughes' Britannia club, when they refused to play a match due to ground conditions and the weather with Invercargill being hit by a blizzard. However, whilst suspended the teams played a benefit match under the new Northern Union (rugby league) rules. Then, in 1909, the New Zealand Rugby Union decreed that any player who had played any game under the "Northern" rules was to be regarded as a professional and was to be expelled.
Hamilton was later part of the first ever provincial game of rugby league in the South Island when he played for Southland in a home and away series against Otago in 1908.