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Harry Butler (rugby league)

Australian rugby league footballer (1887-1965)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 15, 2025
Entity authorityQ60760892 ↗
Source-derived summary

Harry Butler (1887–1965) was a pioneer Australian rugby league footballer who played in the 1900s and 1910s. A New South Wales representative, Butler played for South Sydney in the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) competition, as a lock.

Playing career

Butler began his career for Souths in the first ever season of the NSWRL competition and played in South Sydney's first ever game as a club when they played against North Sydney at Birchgrove Oval. Butler was a member of Souths first ever premiership winning team defeating Eastern Suburbs 14–12 at the Royal Agricultural Showground. The following year, Butler won his second premiership as a Souths player when South Sydney won the grand final against Balmain by default. Souths were due to play Balmain but the club boycotted the match. South Sydney attended the game, kicked off to an invisible opposition, scored a try and were declared premiers. In 1910, Butler played in the 1910 grand final draw against Newtown which ended 4-4. Newtown won the premiership due to them finishing as minor premiers in the regular season. Butler played a further five seasons for the club and retired at the end of 1915.

Editorial summary

“Harry Butler (rugby league)” enters the record as australian rugby league footballer (1887-1965). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harry, Butler and rugby can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1887, 1965, 1910, 1915—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1887-04-23. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Harry, Butler and rugby.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Harry Butler (rugby league)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harry, Butler and rugby provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q60760892. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1965, 1910 and 1915.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Harry Butler (rugby league)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harry Butler (rugby league) primary sources, Harry Butler (rugby league) archive and Harry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Harry Butler (rugby league)”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harry Butler (rugby league)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.