An avowedly amateur body, it adopted rules from English rowing which explicitly excluded from competition professional athletes, as well as mechanics, artisans and labourers.
Writing in 1921, Dunlop stated: "I was therefore forced to look for another plot, and after careful consideration chose the present Lansdowne Road one.
In conjunction with the late Edward Dillon (my trainer), I took a 69 year lease from the Pembroke Estate, paying a ground rent of £60 per annum, of part only of the premises stretching from the railway to about 60 yards from the Dodder.
Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, allowing Dunlop to utilise his engineering expertise to create a pitch envied around Ireland.
Dunlop married secondly (13 May 1911) Ethel, youngest daughter of William Hinch, at St Peter's church, Aungier Street, Dublin, and with her had two sons, one of whom, Eric Wallace Dunlop (1918–2008), was awarded the DFC while serving with the RAF in Burma in 1943, and an MBE in 1957 for services to industrial relations in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).