COMING under the guidance of Jamaican greats Dennis Johnson and Herb McKenley, and lining up in the Champs 100m final of 1965 against the likes of Lennox Miller, Michael Fray, Tony Keyes and even beating the legendary Don Quarrie, one would never have thought that Aldrick ‘Allie’ McNab would have given up track and field for football.

McNab, a renowned sportscaster at Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC), now TVJ, businessman, cabaret singer with his band Allie McNab and the New Breed, and a special advisor in the Ministry of Sports between 2007 and 2011 under the Jamaica Labour Party, reminisced with the Jamaica Observer about his Champs experience.

McNab is more known for his ferocious shot on the football field with either foot, that proved a nightmare for many goalkeepers, but not many people remember that he was one of the fastest sprinters to grace this country in the 1960s.

In 1965 McNab, representing Cornwall College, reached the 100-yard final in his first year in Class One and was up against some talented athletes in Miller and Keyes of Kingston College (KC); Michael Fray of STATHS, Delroy Wallace of Munro, and Anthony Attride of Camperdown. Miller won in a then record of 9.8 seconds, with McNab down the pecking order.

Miller, who actually went on to win silver at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics in the 100m, and bronze in the 200m at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was absent from Champs in 1966, and McNab seized the opportunity to stamp his authority as a senior Class One athlete.

He won the 100 yards in 9.9 seconds, reversing his placing with Wallace and Attride. He went on to be voted Class One champion boy, placing second in the 220 yards to Jimmy Grant of KC, and second to Wallace in the long jump. His efforts propelled Cornwall College to 42 1/3 points and second behind KC with 68 points.

But McNab’s exploits at Champs would not have been possible had he not encountered one famed sprinter, Dennis Johnson, Jamaica’s first 100 yards world record holder, who was a good friend of his mentor, Billy Vernon.

“My success at Champs really came about because of Dennis Johnson. He was a travelling salesman and in Class Three, Class Two coming up, I would finish third, fourth or fifth in the 100 metres.

“Johnson had a big belly at the time and used to come up to Cornwall College and ask who is the fastest boy up here. But he would only race you over 30m and even when you get old, over the first 20, 30m you still maintained a fair bit of your speed. So I could never beat Dennis and marvelled how I couldn’t beat this old man.

“But Dennis looked at me and said, ‘Young McNab, you have tremendous foot speed but you don’t know how to come out of the blocks’. I used to come out and stand up and run. We didn’t have a track programme or track coach per se to correct you of these things. So Dennis Johnson showed me how to do the start and it made a heck of a difference,” McNab noted.

“So in my first year of Class One, I was just working on this start and I made the final. But when I got to the final there was a man who I believe is still one of Jamaica’s greatest athletes who was never given his full due, and that is Lennox ‘Billy’ Miller of KC.

“But my first encounter with Miller was in the relays when I got the baton first and I just saw a pair of knees coming beside me. After, I asked who was that fellow, and they said, ‘Oh, that’s Billy Miller’.”

“That was 65 and I ended up second to last in the race. So I went back to Cornwall determined that in my final year I was going to make my mark with Dennis Johnson and Vernon’s help of course. So I did some strength work in the gym. We never used to do stuff like that and learning how to come out of the blocks early, and it paid dividends,” he recalled.

With KC’s 14-year winning streak which started in 1962, McNab was to later encounter another ‘Fortis’ man in Jimmy Grant, the 440 yards champion, in the 220 yards final.

“I was in lane two and Freddie Green was the starter and when he said on your marks, set…the runner in lane one ran past me, so I figured it was a false start. So, I just kind of limbered out of the starting blocks and I didn’t hear the second gun, I looked up at the starter and he said, ‘Run boy, run’, and I ended up in a blanket (finish) with Jimmy Grant, who pipped me on the line,” noted McNab.

“I was leading in my hurdles semi-final and somehow the person next to me, our hands collided and we both fell, so that put paid to my aspirations in the hurdles,” he added.

But post-Champs, there would be a Caribbean track and field meet involving four countries in Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. It was the precursor to what is today the Carifta Games.

There McNab and Grant would continue their rivalry, and in Trinidad and Tobago, McNab would exact revenge on Grant in the 220 yards.

“So by the time we got to Barbados, Jimmy decided he was only going to run the 440. So I started mouthing him, but he said, he beat me where it counts and that’s at Champs,” said McNab.

“So because DQ (Don Quarrie) was my roommate I said to him come and run the 200, you can pick up a medal, but lo and behold, I was a shoo-in to win the 200, but all of a sudden I saw this youngster pulling up on my shoulder. I actually beat him in that race. When we got to Guyana, it was the same thing, he ran me very close. I won the Forbes Bernard trophy, but I made sure I never ran against Don Quarrie again,” he said laughing.

McNab was older than Quarrie, who was actually in Class Two at Camperdown High at the time, but would later emerge as one of Jamaica’s legendary sprinters, copping gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympic in the 200m, and silver in the 100m.

McNab, while impatiently awaiting a track scholarship, grabbed an opportunity to play professional football in the North American Soccer League (NASL). Football’s gain was track and field’s loss, and McNab left an indelible mark in the annals of local football, mainly at Boys’ Town, where he won titles.

“One noted journalist, Jimmy Carnegie, once wrote he didn’t know if I was a footballer who could run, or a runner who played football,” said McNab.

“My Champs experience was unbelievable. Being an athlete and the competition that there is, the rivalry in school, it helps you as a businessman, by not only competing, but solving problems, and you build friendships from that time that last until this time,” he added.

But how did McNab balance schoolwork and his sporting endeavours? “I went to Cornwall College, and as you know, the motto for Cornwall College is learn or leave (Disce aut Discede). So it wasn’t a question if you want to balance it or not,” he remarked.

He continued: “But what is important, and the message I want to give is that athletics (all sports) is part of the character-building of a human being and it teaches you how to win, but it also teaches you how to lose.

“You must be a man about winning in the same way about losing, and it’s about friendly rivalry and respecting each other’s talent.

“The advent of winning in the whole school structure now is more important to the schools rather than the building of the individuals in terms of what it does to the character,” he posited.

“It’s a no-brainer, you have to balance it and it’s called time management and school is about academics, and sports is about another class, per se. You might not be graded for sports, but you are graded for life in how you handle defeat and how you handle success and how you deal with adversity,” he ended.