Frank Motherway: 'You have to be a bit of a dreamer but when it works, it’s great' 

Now 67, Motherway is the patriarch of a thriving family operation, with wife Liz and their children Deirdre, Paul, Colin and Marie all involved

Frank Motherway of Yellowford Farm (centre). Picture: Healy Racing

In 1972, a dairy farmer the East Cork village of Killeagh travelled up to Ballsbridge, where Goffs' sales company was based at the time, to buy a horse to go point-to-pointing with as a pastime.

He parted with 680 guineas for a Raise You Ten filly he named Handsome Ten but injury prevented her from competing. So instead, he started breeding from her. She produced a colt he sold for £5,800 and having been infected by the bug, decided to reinvest, giving Captain Luke Mullins — a Galway-based army officer and an uncle of trainer Willie Mullins’s — £2,200 for Saucy Society.