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.

"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 rugby stories and I don't think we fully understood it until I got a little older and kind of understood how important rugby is to the culture, specifically Blackrock and how important rugby is to that school.

"Even when I was coming over here, he kind of briefed me on (that). So he won one and lost one Junior Cup and then he played in three Senior Cups, lost his first two and then captained his last year and won that (in 1981).

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"And obviously for me, I don't fully grasp it but I've taken visits to Blackrock and been able to get a slight glimpse into understanding his world, the life he lived and just the rugby life in general."

The tale of how Jim Bertrand ended up attending Blackrock sounds somewhat apocryphal at first glance. The story goes that his father - JD's grandad - who had been dispatched to Ireland to look for a European HQ to locate a company he was working with, happened to pick up two hitchhikers, one of whom was former Ireland rugby international Hugo MacNeill, and that duo not only recommended an apt location for the company but also urged him to enrol his sons into Blackrock.

It's a tale Irish Illustrated's Len Clark, a frequent visitor to this country, confirms to RTÉ Sport from his own conversations with Jim.

"I can tell you because of my Irish connection, that's how I really hit it off with Jim and Christine, JD's mother," said Clark, who has put together the eGuide for the fans who will be coming to the Aviva from the US.

"So I sat down and had the conversation with him and it's been vetted. So that's the story. (Jim's) father, I don't know the company that he ran but it was a multinational company based in the United States so they asked JD's grandfather to basically go over to Europe and find a place and they settled on Ireland and as the story goes, he was driving and saw these two guys hitchhiking, picked them up and not only did they recommend the site where this company should be located but they said, 'You've got to put your boys into Blackrock College!' And then getting them in was the interesting story."

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JD Bertrand said he had heard aspects of that story from his elders but the anecdote that springs to mind is one relayed by his grandad.

"The one thing I do remember my grandpa telling me was when he came over here and learned a lot about Blackrock, (he said), 'My kids are going to go there, that's where I want them to be and we'll do whatever we need to do to put them in there even if it actually means buying the actual desks and anything needed to get my dad and his brother into Blackrock.'"

While rugby and American football only have a tenuous link, Bertrand feels the former is having an influence on his own chosen sport.

"I think one of the things you can see in the transition as football's changed over the years is that football adopts this rugby style of tackling and there's even clinics and a lot of NFL teams that teach that style of tackling and it's kind of trickled down from the NFL all the way down to the university and college level and all the way down to high school, we practice a lot of those techniques they use in rugby to tackle."

And with the likes of former Connacht rugby player Tadhg Leader looking to find a niche for Irish players in the US college system as kickers and punters, Bertrand backs up the belief that it's a pathway more than suitable for sportspeople from this island.

"Most definitely, I just think there's that background there from rugby and soccer, all the kicking games, they have that background," he said.

(l to r) Notre Dame's JD Bertrand, Chris Tyree, Logan Diggs, NaNa Osafo-Mensah, and Audric Estime at Sandymount Strand

"So it's very transferable to American football especially at kicker or punter. I think you will continue to see more people continue to be kickers and punters at the college level as well as the NFL level."

As for the game in August, what can Irish audiences expect? On the field, historically the rivalry with Navy has been very one-sided in favour of Notre Dame.

But for Bertrand, the history and tradition means that spectators will see another unique aspect to the relationship between the two entities.

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"One of the biggest things whenever we play Navy is there's just an extra side of respect because of what they stand for and who they are," said the Georgia native.

"From our point of view, we have such a respect for them. And there are so many traditions that we do with Navy that we don't do with other schools.

"One of the biggest ones which you will visually see is at the end of the game. Both our teams will come together and it'll be Notre Dame, Navy players arm in arm and they'll sing their alma mater, their school song and then we'll go to our fan section and we'll sing our school song with them.

"It's just not typical after a game that you're interacting that much with another team's players."