Dunhill AC, County Senior Cross-Country Champions 1962: (back), Michael White – winner, Donal Flanagan, Tom Cheasty, Billy Dunphy, John McGrath; (front) Tony Cummins, Bobby Power, Jim O’Loughlin, Tommy Hannigan, and trainer Jim White, who won three individual titles in his pomp.

Dunhill’s once-unrivalled athletics tradition dates back to the mid-thirties and its golden era extended until the early sixties. The club won a total of 14 Waterford senior cross-country titles and more than two dozen senior team championships, including consecutive titles from 1935 to ’53 inclusive.

The finest athletes from Dunhill and surrounding parishes raced in their colours during their decades of dominance. The courses used from the early days up to the 1970s were owned by the Halleys, Behans and Veales.

Running barefoot

A picture of a smiling John McGrath, then Sporthouse and subsequently Ballinaclough, wearing No1 and leading the way cross-country in the colours of the Dunhill athletics team back in his prime.

A fine dual player for Butlerstown with his brother Martin, John was a member of a dominant Dunhill AC collective during that era; lining up alongside the likes of the great Mick White, hurler Tom Cheasty, Billy Dunphy, Pierce Cummins, Donal Flanagan, Jim O’Loughlin, Bobby Power, Tony Cummins, Paddy Lyons, Tommy Hannigan, and the Oates brothers, among others.

He came to prominence on home soil in 1958 by winning the first ever county youths championship, covering the 2-mile course ahead of his clubmate Ollie Allen.

Four years later in the county senior six-mile, fifties five-in-a-row legend Mick White was cheered home a hundred yards clear within a roar of his front door. John was one of six Dunhill finishers inside the top 10.

Cutting — Report from the 1958 county senior cross-country championships in Dunhill when John McGrath took the first ever Waterford youths title. [Munster Express]