[2] His first major success came in 1956 with his favourite greyhound Prince of Bermuda who won the Irish St Leger.

McKenna would experience major success at regular intervals over the following years.

It was around this time that he started sending strong teams to compete in the English Greyhound Derby and Ballymaclune provided his first finalist in that event in 1975 and one year later in 1976 he trained the runner up.

[6] Irish Derby finals became regular occurrences and then in 1981 Parkdown Jet won the 1981 English Greyhound Derby for McKenna, this was only the second time anybody had trained both and Irish and English winner (The first was Paddy Keane).

[9] McKenna died in May 2014 leaving a wife Josie and three sons Ger, John and Owen.