‘Somebody has to beat them at some stage’

FRAN RYAN was a reluctant companion down Memory Lane this week. It isn’t that he dislikes the trip, just that 40-something years spent treading the boards as a player and coach with his beloved Marian have blurred his sense of recall.

Exact dates escape him but the sense of fulfilment he has extracted from it all shines through and the prospect of tomorrow’s National Cup final against Killester excavated recollections of a time when the two clubs regularly knocked heads at the summit of the Irish game.

“People forget that there was a huge rivalry between Killester and Marian during the 1970s and into the early part of the 80s,” said the man who will coach UCD Marian in their first cup final appearance at the National Arena in Tallaght.