AN OPENING CENTURY

The somewhat mysterious origins of the game of rugby union began here in Wales in the latter part of the nineteenth century and are linked, as ever in the history of the game to the public schools.

          In England , legend has it that the game had begun fifty years earlier at Rugby , the famous public school in Warwickshire, when William Webb Ellis, during an inter house football match “picked up the ball and ran with it”. thus did rugby begin, due to an impromptu act by a schoolboy who’s name now resonates throughout the sporting world.

          William Webb Ellis never went on to play the game he almost unwittingly founded by that spontaneous and symbolic act. After leaving Rugby school he went on to study at Oxford , and was later ordained into the clergy.

          The reverend William Webb Ellis ended his days in France , where his final resting place overlooks the sea at Menton in Provence and where, in a yearly ceremony, his memory is honoured and his grave tended by the French Rugby Union.

          In 1870, the annual school holidays brought those Neath pupils who were domiciled at the English public schools back to their homes in the town, and legend has it that on a patch of land near Cadoxton during a weekly social gathering, one of them produced a rugby ball. They and others, men and boys, played with and against each other with scratch sides in a game that was new to the town.

          Thus was rugby first played at Neath, and thus, in 1871, was founded one of the worlds most famous clubs- Neath RFC.

          One of the first mentions, in a newspaper of the time in February 1872 describes a game between Neath and Swansea in which “the interest displayed was very great, although the result was undecided, both sides claiming victory”.

          Among those young men gathered during the early days was T. P. Whittington (illustrated left), reputed to be the founder of the Neath club. Whittington (later to become doctor), a scot, was an accomplished and wholehearted player of rare ability who became, in 1873 in a game between Scotland and England, Neath’s first international, and this eight years before the Welsh Rugby Union was formed, almost inevitably it seems, at the Castle Hotel in the heart of the town in 1881.

          In 1874 a newcomer to the district, a young man of just seventeen years called Sam Clarke had joined in a practice session with the Neath team, and was so impressive that he was immediately asked to join the club. Sam Clarke(later major) went on to captain Neath and became, in 1882 the first Neath player to represent Wales when he played in the three-quarters for his country against Ireland in Dublin . It was only the second game that Wales had played, and the first they were to win.

          Neath’s next international was Dr Vernon Pegge, who was capped by Wales against England in 1891. Thus was the precedent set and the forerunners in place for the many others that were to follow.

          Some years earlier the famous all black strip was worn for the first time. Assorted coloured jerseys were the order of the day until, in a match against Bridgend in 1880 the Neath wing three-quarter and Welsh quarter mile athletics champion Dick Gordon was killed. The team resorted to funereal black as a tribute in his honour, and has been worn ever since, perhaps the most famous garb in rugby football.

          The Maltese cross had its origins some years later as a result of  badge worn in the cap of a player called Richard Moxham, who wore the emblem as an adornment, whereupon it was decided to adopt the crest, in order to relieve the monotonous black.

          The first home was the Gnoll grounds, until a dispute with the local cricket club led to a move to superintendent Evan’s field near the old Gnoll cinema in Gnoll Park Road . Other grounds followed, including Cadoxton, Tricks field in King Street and the famous Bird in Hand Pitch near the old Fairfield, before in 1898 re-establishment back at the Gnoll, where, some thirty years earlier, it had all began.

          The next twenty years saw the club gain in importance and prestige, aided in no small part by an administrator of rare talent and foresight in the shape of Walter Rees.

          First appointed by Neath in 1896, he then became secretary of the Welsh Rugby Union for the next fifty years, and is rightly regarded as being one of the central figures in the early development of the game in the principality.

          At Neath, fixtures were organised against many of the leading English clubs of the day, and a steady flow of representative and international players brought honour to the club and the town.

          Albert Freethy had taken up an appointment as a teacher at the Alderman Davies School at Neath in 1919 and was an enthusiastic advocate of schoolboy rugby. Later to gain worldwide repute as an international referee, he was fondly regarded locally for his guidance of the Neath Schoolboy team who won the Dewar Shield, in 1922 with a side regarded as perhaps the finest ever. In an invincible season they played 19 games, winning them all, and scored 385 points with only 35 against. The team, under Freethy’s control and influence was kept together to become the famous Freethys ex-schoolboys, known throughout Wales as the invincibles.

          Some years later one of the greatest players ever to wear the famous black jersey was to appear for Neath.

          Dan Jones was, and is the most prolific try scorer in the history of the game. It is a sad testimony to the social prejudice inherent at the time that he was only to play once for Wales , in 1927.

          Certainly not a man with the benefit of higher education, a similarity can be found with one of Llanelli’s all time greats, the legendary Albert Jenkins, who also won a meagre number of caps not commensurate with his undoubted ability. The old school tie mentality, nurtured and promoted by an establishment sympathetic to the universities, was manifested in a nepotism among national selectors whose tendencies were to look after their own.

           A measure of the greatness of Dan Jones can be gauged by a comparison with one of Neath’s modern greats, the mercurial genius that is Shane Williams. In Shane Williams’ most prolific season for Neath and Wales in 2002/3 he scored 29 tries. In 1928/29 Dan Jones scored 73.

          The years before and after the second world war saw the club, under the chairmanship of Arthur Griffiths consolidate its position as one of the country’s leading  centres of Rugby Union. All the leading rugby playing nations played at the Gnoll, among them Australia , South Africa and New Zealand . Championships were won, and titles earned, chiefly it must be said, based on the clubs enviable reputation for producing forwards of passionate commitment.

          There were gifted three-quarters, half backs and full backs of talent and composure, but it was the forwards, those indomitable packs, those obdurate people, that seemingly inexhaustible supply of hard, uncompromising men for which the club was rightly famed.

          In the first rugby international to be televised live, there were three Neath forwards in the Welsh pack that withstood a fierce onslaught against New Zealand to win for Wales at Cardiff in 1953. Courtney Meredith was to win 14 caps, the peerless Roy John 19 and Rees Stephens 32. The three were later to tour with the British Lions in the antipodes where Roy John was dubbed “The King”. Rees Stephens, like his father before him was later to captain Neath and Wales.

          The sixties were, for the most part an undistinguished decade, although the championship was won in 1966 under the captaincy of Martyn Davies, a man from my own village of Tonna , who went on to play a record number of games for the club. The Welsh sevens were won at Cardiff Arms Park, and the club unearthed, in Grahame Hodgson, their greatest ever full back. Dave Morris, unheralded and unassuming was to become the most capped Welsh flanker of all time, whilst Ron Waldron and Brian Thomas first appeared in a playing capacity for Neath and Wales .

          Both were destined to become an integral part of coaching and administration during the halcyon days that were yet to come, almost a quarter of a century later.

          It was fitting that almost exactly a hundred years after that initial gathering by those public schoolboys near Cadoxton that Neath would become the first winners of the Welsh cup by defeating Llanelli at Cardiff Arms Park in 1972, and would later become the first official champions of Wales.

          Thus ended over a century of achievement by this great club, interwoven as it is, in spirit and identity with the lives of so many people in and around the town. 

          To us, the committed, we believe, rightly or wrongly that we are different. We perceive, in its intrinsic character an almost Shakespearian trait by recognising within it something of ourselves. We are different, and after all, why shouldn’t we believe that we are different? … We are Neath.   

June 2011 - Alan Hughes presents the Managing Director of the Castle Hotel Sally Rowlands with a framed presentation of his story 'An Opening Century' which covers the early days of Neath rugby and the birth of the Welsh Rugby Union at the Castle Hotel. For more information about the formation of the WRU at the Castle Hotel and other info please.............

CLICK HERE

The autograph, tangible provenance of one’s meetings, however fleeting the moment, with the great and the good, the famous and the infamous, within our midst.

          My first autograph book, given by my mother when I was a small boy was a somewhat garish affair. On its front was the Union Jack, surrounding a picture of the Queen, in the opulent and ceremonial garb of her 1953 coronation, smiling benignly from a cover made from thinly rolled tin. Its outward, armour plated resilience however, belied the flimsiness of the succeeding pages within, and I remember being rather crestfallen on discovering, after page one, that the scrawled signatures, in anything other than an uncommon lightness of touch would ruin the following pages by their indentations. In the fullness of time, I learnt that a piece of cardboard, positioned between the leaves, could somewhat alleviate this effect.

          The great and the good, for me, were sportsmen. My hero’s were cricketers and rugby players, who were pursued with a competitive intensity shared with many others of my own age in and around the town. Winter Saturdays were of course rugby match days during which an unruly posse of us would gather outside the dressing rooms at the Gnoll, there to thrust pen and book at the perceived celebrities as they embarked on the post match walk to the clubhouse at the other end of the ground. There were of course targets to achieve, some of them more unlikely than others.

          When Penarth for example came to town it was their inside half and captain called Bernard Templeman, affectionately known as Slogger who was the prized signature. He spent his entire career with the tiny, though prosperous club in the Cardiff suburbs except for one season, when he succumbed to the pressures and overtures from the Cardiff club, their big city neighbours and played for them before rejoining Penarth, where he was most appreciated and perhaps most at ease. ‘I wasn’t the Cardiff type’. For over a decade he was courted by other, more prestigious clubs but stayed loyal to Penarth as their finest player and talisman and thus the most prized autograph, indeed, among his peers in the Penarth ranks his was the only autograph, to the exclusion of all others that the posse of assembled schoolboys rather cruelly sought.

          Diminutive,  squat, and later rotund, he was to be found after he retired and on a daily basis at a corner table in The Old Arcade pub in the centre of Cardiff, where he held court, and where, even to this day there is a plaque which proclaims it to be, simply and appropriately Slogger’s Corner.

Another target was to be found among the ranks of an equally unlikely club in Cross Keys. This time it was a prop forward called Rex Richards who had once played for Wales against France . To be capped for Wales from Cross Keys was in itself worthy of note, but his brief moment of fame extended not only among the rugby fraternity of the Monmouthshie valleys but to Hollywood .

          Richards, endowed with film star good looks at the outset, with a bronzed swarthiness coupled with a mighty physique, had, on a lengthy visit to America shortly afterwards found his way to the Universal Studios in Los Angeles, where he auditioned for the role of Tarzan in an epic Hollywood film in which he almost co-starred with the glamorous American actress Esther Williams. “Me Tarzan, you Jane”, and also appeared in a long running television series with the fearsome title of "The Wild Women of Wongo".  

From the Gwent valleys he had become an icon of the silver screen, in which he swam in the jungle lagoons and swung from tree to tree with a beautiful woman on his arm whilst dressed only in a loincloth. The colourful path of his life’s journey had taken him from the wintry pastures of Pandy Park in Cross Keys to being befriended by the tropical apes. Some journey. Some guy. His autograph, and sadly for his team mates hardly anyone else was the signature we wanted. He signed it "Rex TARZAN Richards".

The town of Neath is known in sporting terms throughout the nation of course, chiefly for its rugby. The game as we know it in Wales began at Neath, at the Castle Hotel in 1881 and Neath is the oldest club. In the 1988/89 season Neath scored 1,917 points and scored 345 tries, more points and tries than any team in the history of the game before or since, a world record that is unlikely ever to be broken, but little is known of another sporting record that was achieved in the town.

In the winter of 1968 the talk amongst the townsfolk was of a world record amateur snooker frame score achieved by a man called Dai Morgan.

          Born in the village of Crynant in the Neath valley in 1920, Dai Morgan began his working life as a collier, and represented his village at rugby as a robust and wholehearted back row forward, before taking up snooker at the relatively mature age of 37, after an earlier flirtation with billiards.

The snooker halls of South Wales had spawned some of the greatest players ever to compete in the game, and snooker’s place in the social and economic structure was firmly entrenched in the nation’s sporting awareness. Its off-quoted mantra, about its most successful players being products of a miss-spent youth, was given scant regard by its many devotees. It shares with darts, that other indoor sport without pretension, a similarity in that its leading participants are not required to attain any high degree of physical conditioning to be at their compelling best. Its nine dart finish, like snookers magical 147 being an elusive and fleeting glimpse of perfection.

          The game of snooker thrived as never before in the post war years, in the working men’s clubs and welfare institutes in almost all the centres of population. In Neath the games premier location was at the Mackworth club in the centre of the town. Wood paneled, hushed and somewhat reverential in character and content, it had all the hallmarks of a quintessentially British snooker institution, and was a place where the worlds greatest players would often appear.

To the casual observer, like me, venturing forth for the first time in the early days as a wide eyed innocent and yet to be corrupted schoolboy, the cavernous smoke filled halls were places of mystery and intrigue. One sensed, without actually ever knowing it for sure, that a delicious, exciting and furtive subterfuge was taking place among the flickering figures in the semi darkness.

          Amid such a scenario, at the Mackworth club in Neath, in front of a large and expectant crowd on a wet December night in 1968 on table No.1 and during a match against a well known local player, Dai Morgan was to make snooker history.

          After the customary early and cautious exchanges the first and ultimately fateful black was potted inadvertently by Dai Morgan’s opponent, resulting in Morgan being awarded seven points. There followed, with the slow and measured composure for which he was famed, 15 potted reds, followed by 15 blacks and all six colours to achieve a total frame score of 154 - 0. A world record in the amateur game.

    Verified by the billiards association and control centre at Arundel Street in London , it became a talking point wherever the game was played.

          Dai Morgan, already famous throughout the South Wales snooker establishment, was to extend his influence by playing many exhibition matches all over the country, in partnership with the most famous names in the sport, among them Jackie Rae, John Pullman and Joe Davis, for the aid of disadvantaged children, a cause and a charity that would always remain close to his heart.

Sadly, no longer with us, Dai Morgan died after a long illness on October 26 1973 at the tragically young age of 53.

In the surviving snooker halls they will talk with nostalgia about the games greatest players, all of whom graced the tables at the Mackworth. From the elder statesman of the amateur game, Neath’s own Mario Berni, who became champion of Wales, to the world professional champions of yesteryear, such as Scotland’s Walter Donaldson, Australia’s Horace Lindrum, England’s John Pullman and John Spencer, Ray Reardon of Wales and Ireland’s Alex Higgins.

They will talk long into the night about the greatest of them all, the incomparable and legendary Joe Davis, and occasionally of a feat unsurpassed or unequalled even by him - Dai Morgan’s 154. 

A lifelong interest in sporting venues took me recently to that most quintessentially English of test match cricket grounds, Trent Bridge Nottingham , and its renowned library.

I was met by Mr. Peter Wynne Thomas who has presided over this, one of the largest Cricket libraries in the world with loving care in his capacity as archivist and librarian for more years than he cares to remember.

As a man of Neath (actually Tonna) it is a special place for me, for it was at Trent Bridge in the 1934 test match against Australia that a former pupil of Neath Grammar School-Cyril Walters- became the first Welshman to captain England.

Remarkably, in the long history of cricket, the only other Welshman to captain England was a product of the same school-Tony Lewis-who was also a rugby player of some distinction for Cambridge University , Gloucester and Neath, and who was later to become president of the M.C.C.

Peter Wynne Thomas, an architect by profession whose father was born in Wales , showed me some of the books, scorecards and documents gathered and stored in sequential order in polished wooden bookcases among the memorabilia of centuries.

I told him, although I suspected he knew, of the bat and ball which was displayed for years at Neath Cricket club after the match in May 1868 in which the redoubtable W.G Grace famously ‘bagged a pair’. A brief search ensued until the details were unearthed. The United South of England eleven versus twenty two of Cadoxton with Howitt. A splendidly Victorian footnote recorded that Howitt ‘cyphered’ Mr Grace, and that one of the umpires (doubtless impartial but mindful of the town’s roman origins) was called Julius Caesar!!  

Sadly, there seems little likelihood of anyone succeeding Mr Wynne Thomas when this most gentle and articulate of men decides to end his labour of love. His view, as mine, is that cricket, with its history and tradition has a quality of literature which is perhaps over and above all other sports.

Close by, and almost overshadowing the cricket ground are the two football grounds, Notts county, the oldest league club, and closer still, Notts Forest . Bigger, brasher, but lacking the timeless charm that is Trent Bridge .

When the next test match is played at Trent Bridge we have arranged to meet again. Until then, I left him to do what he has done day after day, year after year in his quiet vocation, studiously researching among the artefacts in that hallowed room. Perhaps only cricket could produce such a place, and such a man.

“Inside ropes please, one for me and one for the boy”. With those words, spoken by my father, I first entered the Gnoll, to begin, like him before me, a lifelong devotion to Neath Rugby Club. In that first game (against Richmond of all people), we took what became our usual place at the Union End, away, my father reasoned, from the more raucous elements among the crowd. Thus, was I inducted.

After that first game I wanted him to take me again, to every game in any weather. I was smitten. He couldn’t get away with saying he was tired after a morning shift, because being an odious little fellow I demanded that we go.

At half-time there were the autographs. Too shy in the early days, I was soon leading the pack towards the half-time huddle, towards the Neath team of course. However famous and illustrious the opponents it was always the Neath signatures I wanted. As the years passed and he became too old and ill to accompany me, I started to go to the away games as well, eventually to every game, anywhere, often on my own, to all parts of the country, wherever the all blacks were playing.

One of my first   favourites was Cyril Roberts, that most powerful of wings for Neath and Wales. I still see him in Neath these days, looking fit, healthy and tanned, a testimony to the way he has lived his life. In those days he was a coruscating runner who thrilled the Gnoll crowd with his touchline dashes.

Years passed, chiefly of mediocrity, until one day there came, for me, a seminal moment. It was the arrival of a full back, his name was G.T.R Hodgson of St Lukes College, Exeter and Neath – Grahame Hodgson – and he was the most complete player I had ever seen.  

Everything he did was immaculate, even his kit seemed perfect, an unsubstantiated rumour had it that even his bootlaces were ironed. 

For years, for me, he was Neath. There was, as ever, a fearsome pack, but it seemed to me then, that whilst he was there, as that last elegant line of defence that everything was going to be all right.

The history and traditions of Neath are known all over the rugby world, the list of achievements endless-first cup winners, first league winners, first treble winners, World Record holders (still) for tries and points in a season, among them. It was in Neath after all, that the Welsh Rugby Union was formed. Essentially blue collar, it has never been a club of glamour, thriving rather on a siege mentality, an esprit de corps which has been their enduring hallmark over the years.

None of this mattered to me then of course, nothing mattered much at all, as long as there was Hodgson at full back. He played fifteen times for Wales (it should have been thirty). He was a thorn in the side of whoever Neath played. Coming from the ground the opposition would bemoan the fact that they made him look good by “Kicking the ball down his throat”. The reason of course, was that with a sense of positioning that was uncanny, he was to be found wherever they kicked the ball. His catching was faultless and his screw kicking perfect (he was later recruited to coach J.P.R Williams in the art).  

Years later, when, in rugby terms he was old and I was young I actually played against him.

I have always regretted not telling him on that day what an influence he had been on me, but a combination of shyness and embarrassment meant that I let the moment pass. It didn’t seem to me, in those days, to be the right thing to do.

When I recreate the scenario now, I wish I could have sought him out in a quiet corner, just to say how much I had enjoyed and appreciated his career. As it was he never knew he was my hero, and I lacked the moral fortitude to tell him.

He had spoken to me only once, in the showers after the game, “Hey mate, chuck over the soap”, it was the only pass I ever saw him drop.

It began at the side of a railway track, close to my home in Tonna, near Neath in the late fifties. My father and I, on a morning walk, had come across a book, lying in the undergrowth on a disused line which once ran through the picturesque Dulais Valley . Not just any book, but a huge, beautifully illustrated leather bound volume, a first edition no less of Ancient Ballad Poetry.  

Embossed on its cover, in gold, was the crest of a school, not just any school, but Rugby School, one of the most famous and prestigious schools in all of England. 

 Written on the fly-leaf, in what appeared to be a classical hand, were the words Rhys Powell Morgan-Christmas 1860.  

 We dusted it, polished it, and cherished it. I couldn’t have imagined it then, but poetry was to become a source of enjoyment and fulfilment in my own life, in particular that of the late R.S.Thomas, whom I met just once, and who remains the man whose work I most admire.  In the bookcase at home the book remained, in quiet repose for almost thirty years, until the opportunity to seek its history was presented.

 My eldest son, much to his chagrin was sent to public school, (his brother had successfully resisted the offer). I had somehow managed to bring them up alone, aided by my father, whose earthy practicalities contrasted with the more aesthetic virtues of my late mother. Unhappy at boarding school and homesick at first, my son had nonetheless eventually settled happily into the somewhat insular world which was now his, and there was, as ever, rugby to be played.

 As a child he had watched Neath, with me of course, and was later to win representative honours in athletics and rugby, playing full-back for the Welsh Public Schools against England .

 In the rarefied atmosphere of public school rugby I was an unlikely parent, and because of my dishevelled appearance and lapses into swearing, I had been gently advised to steer a course well away from the more well to do among the assembled throng. “That’s Rupert Digby Penfold’s dad just there, he’s on the board at Lloyds, with Henry’s aunt Lucinda, a circuit judge in Kent ”. Consequently, at the games I became a shadowy, peripheral figure, not least from his own team-mates, who, on hearing me shout the odd obscenity would tease him mercilessly at evening prep.

 I settled into a rhythm, attending all the games in which he played, at all the famous public schools throughout the land, until eventually, the final fixture loomed. It was to be an away game, and it was to be against Rugby school.

It was the chance for me to take the book from its resting place at home, and seek its history from whence it came. The game was to be his and the teams last, before dispersing, and moving, as it were, into a man’s world, and of all the places where it could have ended, it would end where rugby began.

 I decided to stay overnight, and took a room near the school. I explored all of the places for which Rugby School is famous, I visited the statue of Rupert Brooke and the chapel immortalised by Matthew Arnold. As a preparation I had re-read Tom Browns Schooldays, the classic tale of life at Rugby , and the evil deeds of  Flashman.

 Outside the school is the statue commemorating William Webb-Ellis who, “with a fine disregard for the rules, picked up the ball and ran with it”. Thus was rugby born, on that field, at that school, at that place, all those years ago.

 Of all the famous seats of learning that I had visited, it was Rugby , with its history, its charm, and its traditions that was the most beautiful.

 I took the book into the library and was met by a kindly, studious, elderly and bespectacled man, in a faded tweed jacket with leather patches sown onto each elbow. He was of course, the archivist.

We discovered that the book had been presented to Rhys Powell Morgan as a prize for latin in 1860, by the headmaster at the time, who was later to become Archbishop of Canterbury.  A census some years later revealed that Rhys Powell Morgan had become a solicitor in Neath.  

 Not that it mattered, but the match was won, a full-blooded affair that was in the best traditions of the sport. The symbolism of the moment was largely lost on my son, but for me there was a poignancy in seeing that last encounter unfold. They weren’t men quite yet. Drinking, smoking and sex had probably entered their lives already, but they weren’t men yet, and it was possible then, to feel, to perceive, in the simplistic honesty of those last admirable endeavours, just the remnants of innocence.

 After this it would be university, and, well, yes, more drinking, smoking, and sex, but that was for another day. My son had enjoyed public school and was sorry to be moving on. In those years he had made his friends for life, and even I had made a mark, presenting a prize which is now awarded annually.

 As for the book of Ancient Ballad Poetry - when I came home I returned it to the bookcase, where it has been ever since.

 Should there be a descendant of Rhys Powell Morgan, a scholar of latin who was at Rugby school in 1860, and was presented by a future Archbishop of Canterbury, with a classically beautiful book, which was thrown into a railway ditch near Neath a hundred years later, they can get in touch. Until then it will be at home with me in Tonna.  

 Perhaps, but only perhaps, where it belongs.   

The year was 1866, the scene was a remote farmstead nestling in the Irish countryside near Dungarvan, a small unremarkable town near the coast in County Wexford, a land of undulating pastures, peat bogs and mists.

A greyhound bitch called Lady Sarah gave birth to a litter of seven pups, the smallest and weakest of which was a black dog. He was named after the Orphan boy who looked after him. The little black dog's life would be short, before he died of pneumonia in 1871 having lived for only five years.
In those five years he was to have songs, poems and books written about him, and they named pubs and restaurants after him in Britain, all over Ireland and as far afield as America and Australia. His image was embossed onto the backs of coins, and the Queen of England, Queen Victoria ordered that a private train be provided to transport him to Windsor Castle where he was presented at court.
In Ireland they built a monument, a statue which stands to this day in his honour, for this was Master M'grath, ''the most Celebrated dog in the world''.

The sport in which Master M'grath was peerless was the ancient one of hare coursing, no longer practiced in this country due to the hunting ban, but still hugely popular all over the Irish republic. Master M'graths first attempts at coursing during his trials were so poor that his trainer, James Galwey and owner Lord Lurgan ordered that he be given away, but the orphan boy and another kennel hand sensed a latent promise, and it was decided to give him a reprieve. 

He duly won his first official event, against all the odds in the visitors cup at Lurgan, and was victorious again soon afterwards in a sixty four dog competition at Creagh. He was now beginning to turn heads and was the topic of excited speculation among the greyhound fraternity. After more victories it was decided, still in his puppy season of 1868 to enter him in the sports blue riband, the Waterloo cup, held each year at Altcar near Liverpool in the North of England. 

First contested in 1836 it was recognised the world over as the sport's supreme prize. Master M'grath and his entourage duly sailed to Britain to take on the aristocrats of the sport in the English heartland. He won every round, and in the final defeated Cock Robin, a hitherto renowned champion with many victories to his credit. News of his triumph was greeted with riotous acclaim throughout the republic, he had become the first Irish dog to win the Waterloo cup, the most coveted and prestigious prize in the greyhound world. 

He returned to Durgarvan and his homeland, now a national celebrity, before going back in 1870 to defend his title at Liverpool. He again won every round, before, at the last, and in one of history's greatest contests he defeated the celebrated bitch Bab at the Bouster in an epic final battle. A crowd of over 90,000 had attended over the three days, many of whom had travelled from the republic. Remarkably, he had defended his title, and his fame knew no bounds. He became known as the immortal black, ''the most celebrated dog in the world''. 

He returned to the scene of his triumphs in 1870 to defend yet again the ultimate prize. This time, in the first round, against a fine bitch called Lady Lyons, and to the horror of all who watched, he fell through the ice in the frozen river Allt, and nearly drowned before being rescued and pulled to safety by one of the crowd.

It was the only time in his entire career that he was to lose. 

His defeat was regarded in Ireland almost as an injustice, and the great dog became thought of as something of a martyr to what was perceived to be an English air of superiority in sport and in life. Thus it was, that in 1871 he went back to Liverpool for what was to be his last attempt at the championship that every Irishman believed was rightfully his. He carried the hopes and aspirations of a people fuelled by a sense of oppression, which had seen the horrors of famine and beleaguered by insurrection. They needed a hero and they yearned for a champion, and they found one in Master M'grath.

Amid scenes of unparalleled fervour he won the supreme prize again, defeating Pretender in the final. He had won the Waterloo cup on an unprecedented three occasions. The victory news was relayed to Dublin and the other large Irish cities where the celebrations were unbridled as the nation rejoiced.
In England Queen Victoria asked that he be brought to her by private train, to be presented at court at Windsor, the only time in history that a royal audience was granted to a dog. 

He would never compete again, and in 1871 after a short illness, at twenty minutes to ten on Christmas eve, he died. 

They buried him at Lurgan in the grounds of a house called Solitude. He had united a nation and a people as never before. They preserved his heart after a post mortem in Dublin, where it was found to be almost twice the size of a normal dog's heart. In Ireland they put his image on the back of the sixpence and his obituary in the Irish Times ran to three pages, almost unprecedented even for humans. At the junction of the Clonmel road, in Durgarvan where he was born, they built a monument, a large imposing stone obelisk which stands to this day in his honour, the only statue in all of Ireland which commemorates a dog.

Having researched the backround of this story in and around his homeland in Dungarvan and Waterford, I decided to finish it, on my way home (not untypically) in a pub, in the centre of Wexford, that rather quaint but somewhat ramshackle town in the Irish heartland. There, I found, quite unexpectedly, in a place of prominence above the fireplace, and over a century and a quarter after his passing, a large oil painting of a small greyhound. It was Master M'grath of course, the immortal black, ''the most celebrated dog in the world''