The 1910 US rugby team that toured Australia. Ken Dole is in the back row, fourth from the left.
An American rugby player in Maitland, 1910
In 1910 things were tense between two rival rugby football competitions in New South Wales, Australia. For some years the game styled on that originally played at the Rugby school in England had been administered by the so-called Rugby Union, but the conservative reign of the union bosses was being threatened by a breakaway group of rebels who played the same game but called themselves the Rugby League. The main reason for the rebellion was the same as that which had precipitated the formation of a breakaway rugby league in England - an argument over whether…