Bohs captain Buckley still has 'a job to do' despite being sidelined for FAI Cup final

Any rueful thoughts Keith Buckley might have had about injury preventing him leading Bohemians out in Sunday’s FAI Cup final were smothered by his cousin Conor McGregor.

The pair of sportsmen are related through family but have now also both experienced the trauma of suffering simultaneous ACL and MCL rupture.

Despite their knees crumbling, they each tried to battle on – McGregor beating Max Holloway on his American UFC debut and Buckley rising from the turf against St Patrick’s Athletic.

It was only the next day that the extent of the damage was diagnosed, robbing him of his bid to exact revenge from the Cup final defeat of two years ago to the Saints.

He won’t be a passive captain though, rousing his teammates in the same way he would if he was taking to the Aviva Stadium pitch in his customary midfield berth.

“I do look at him sometimes to get a bit of motivation,” he said of McGregor. “I was only rewatching his documentary and we’ve been chatting about how he recovered from the injury.

“He didn’t have to contact me because he has other things going on but it was nice of him.

"As he said, it is a journey now, a process for your mind. You will find out a lot more mentally about yourself that you never did before and how the body moves in different ways when you come back.

“I’ve seen people who are weak mentally not come back from these things. They give up but no, I won’t take any shortcuts.

“I don’t know if it’s in the family but after my injury I saw the ball and then tried to hop up. Conor fought on, won the match and became world champion.” One operation down, a second to go. The MCL surgery is due this side of Christmas before the rehabilitation intensifies early in the new year.

Mary Larkin, the renowned