John James Carson was a rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 player who represented Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Carson, a prop, was born in Grahamstown

Grahamstown

Grahamstown is a city in the Eastern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa and is the seat of the Makana municipality. The population of greater Grahamstown, as of 2003, was 124,758. The population of the surrounding areas, including the actual city was 41,799 of which 77.4% were black,...

 and claimed one international rugby caps for Australia. His debut game was against Great Britain, at Sydney, on 24 June 1899 , the inaugural rugby Test match played by an Australian national representative

Australia national rugby union team

The Australian national rugby union team is the representative side of Australia in rugby union. The national team is nicknamed the Wallabies and competes annually with New Zealand and South Africa in the Tri-Nations Series, in which they also contest the Bledisloe Cup with New Zealand and the...

side. Zavos describes Carson as a "formidable front-rower" and quotes a contemporary commentator "the best all-round forward in Australia....in the pack, in the loose and on the lineout, he is equally good." Zavos cites the highest praises as being an acknowledgement by "New Zealanders" that he was as good as any forward in that country.

Sources

• Collection (1995) Gordon Bray presents The Spirit of Rugby, Harper Collins Publishers Sydney
• Howell, Max (2005) Born to Lead - Wallaby Test Captains, Celebrity Books, Auckland NZ