Blackrock roots enhance Dublin trip for Notre Dame star JD Bertrand

This August will be a bit of a voyage of mutual discovery for Irish sports fans and two of American College Football's preeminent institutions.

The 26th of that month is the date set for the Aer Lingus College Football Classic which will see Notre Dame's Fighting Irish lock horns with eternal rivals Navy at the Aviva Stadium.

It will be the third time that Dublin will play host to a Notre Dame-Navy fixture, with the first having taken place at Croke Park way back in 1996 and the last edition hosted at the Aviva 11 years ago.

But for Notre Dame linebacker JD Bertrand, visiting Ireland will not be as much of a novelty as it will be for most of his team-mates.

The 22-year-old, who has just finished a marketing degree at the renowned Indiana university before going into a sports data analytics masters next year, has been to these shores more than once in the past and was back again this week as he and four of his team-mates touched down on Irish soil ahead of the ticket lottery for this August's game.

But more significantly than his three previous trips over, Bertrand is the son of a former Leinster Schools Cup-winning captain.

"It was one of the biggest highlights of his life and he's always come back here and tries to come back as often as possible and we have a lot of family friends that we're still really connected to," Bertrand said as he spoke to RTÉ Sport from the Cliffs of Moher this week, about his father Jim's experience of living in Wicklow as well as studying at Blackrock for a part of his youth during the late 1970s and early '80s.

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"He was born in the States and then came over here, all the way through his university years and he always told us about his