[2] McArthur's rugby career was played with the Eastern Suburbs RUFC in Sydney, Australia.

He was selected in Australia's inaugural national rugby team to tour the northern hemisphere - Dr Paddy Moran's First Wallabies for the 1908–09 Australia rugby union tour of Britain.

At the time, the rugby tournament for the London Olympics game may not have appeared to be of great significance.

Australia had already beaten Cornwall, the British county champions, early in the tour, and Scotland, Ireland and France had all turned down the Rugby Football Union's invitation to participate in the Olympic bouts.

Neither the tour captain, Moran, nor the vice-captain Fred Wood played, so Chris McKivat led the Wallabies to an easy 32–3 victory and to Olympic glory, with each Wallaby in that match thereafter an Olympic gold medallist.