{"id":166043,"date":"2025-09-24T12:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T12:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/166043\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T12:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T12:15:15","slug":"theres-no-better-international-venue-for-the-steelers-than-croke-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/166043\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s No Better International Venue for the Steelers Than Croke Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

I lost track of how many times I got full-body chills while at Croke Park in Dublin in late July. The first time was when a taxi dropped me off at the stadium the day before the All-Ireland senior hurling final, and I saw the enormous stands towering above me. It happened again when I first set foot in the empty stadium as we filmed the latest installment of our Stadium Wonders video series<\/a>. The chills returned repeatedly the following day, during the final between Cork and Tipperary\u2014when the crowd roared as the two teams paraded around the field<\/a> in the pregame ceremony, when the fans sang the national anthem in unison, when Cork scored the first point of the match 13 seconds in, and on and on.<\/p>\n

As an Irish American whose interest in sports is primarily rooted in the traditions, history and communal aspects of fandom, it was a dream come true. I\u2019d been dying to see a hurling match live ever since my first trip to Ireland as a 17-year-old. To have my first hurling experience be an All-Ireland final at the sport\u2019s home was jaw-dropping. Most American sports fans probably aren\u2019t familiar with Croke Park or the Gaelic games that are played there. Still, it doesn\u2019t take an expert to appreciate the fast and physical game of hurling, or the iconic stadium that serves as the sport\u2019s home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sports<\/p>\n

Blat Garcia\/Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n

Croke Park is, without exaggeration, one of the most culturally significant buildings in all of Ireland. The stadium is the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing body for Ireland\u2019s indigenous sports of Gaelic football and hurling, but it\u2019s also much more than that. Built nearly 150 years ago, the stadium is inextricably tied to Irish identity\u2014in part because of its status as the GAA\u2019s headquarters and in turn because of the GAA\u2019s ties to the Irish independence movement. It\u2019s a place where generations of Irish people have made some of their strongest sporting memories, where the island\u2019s native games are played at the highest level, and where blood was spilled during the country\u2019s fight for independence. And on Sunday, when the Vikings and Steelers kick off at 2:30 p.m. local time, it\u2019ll play host to Ireland\u2019s first regular-season NFL game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To understand how important Croke Park is to Irish people requires a brief lesson on the country\u2019s history and the conditions under which the GAA was founded. The late 19th century was a turbulent time in Ireland. The country was reeling from the loss of roughly one-third of its population due to the 1847 Great Famine and subsequent refugee crisis. Those who remained in the country endured efforts by British rule to squash Irish cultural traditions, most notably the native Irish language. In 1884, against the backdrop of this cultural crisis, a group of seven men met at a hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary, to form the GAA, to modernize and expand traditional Irish sports, as well as to preserve the native language and other elements of the culture. The first All-Ireland finals at the stadium that would become known as Croke Park were held 11 years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1880s, there was a real fear amongst Irish people that our pastimes and cultural exploits were receding at an alarming rate\u2014and they were,\u201d GAA director of communications Alan Milton says as he gave me a tour of the stadium. \u201cThe [GAA\u2019s Gaelic] games have been front and center in Irish life ever since. There was a famous saying that the game spread like a prairie fire. Once one village set up a club, the next village wanted its club to be better than the original club. It was a domino effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that there are over 2,200 GAA clubs in Ireland today, and another 400 around the world, is a testament to the success of the founders\u2019 mission, as is Croke Park\u2019s status as one of the finest stadiums in all of Europe. Between 1993 and 2005, the stadium underwent a complete overhaul in which the aging stands were replaced one by one with a modern, state-of-the-art facility. (Demolishing and reconstructing one side of the stadium at a time dragged out the renovation process, but also guaranteed that Croke Park never missed an All-Ireland final during the construction process.) With 82,300 seats, it\u2019s now the fourth-largest stadium in Europe and by far the largest in Ireland. Not bad for a stadium solely dedicated to sports that few outside Ireland have even heard of.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the financing for these renovations came from none other than the owner of Sunday\u2019s designated home team. \u201cMy dad started a fund with his partner, Tony O\u2019Reilly, and many others back in 1976,\u201d says Steelers president Art Rooney II, whose family emigrated from Ireland in the 1800s and bought the Steelers in \u201933. \u201cSo they had funded a lot of different projects in Ireland over the years, and there was some money that went into Croke Park a few different times.\u201d<\/p>\n

From its inception, the GAA was closely associated with Irish nationalism. More than 300 of its members took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, a key moment in the Irish revolutionary period. In \u201920, during the Irish War of Independence, the GAA was tragically thrust into the battle for a free Ireland when British soldiers opened fire on the crowd<\/a> during a Gaelic football match at Croke Park between Dublin and Tipperary. Fourteen people, including Tipperary player Michael Hogan, were killed. As many as 100 more were injured.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Gaelic games aren\u2019t just sports. Rather, they\u2019re a celebration and an assertion of a culture that has been under threat for centuries. And Croke Park is the spiritual and literal home of that movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose it\u2019s a cathedral of Irish sport, but it\u2019s more than just Irish sport,\u201d Milton says. \u201cIt goes to the very essence of being Irish for a lot of people. It’s in our DNA. [The stadium is] really sort of the nation\u2019s playground in lots of ways. You know, lots of people have had some of their best days ever, either playing out there, if you\u2019re one the privileged few, or in the stands supporting the people who are out there. It goes back to the very formation of the state and beyond. So it\u2019s part of the emergence of modern Ireland in a very special way. And it really gets to the heart of our identity as a people, where you\u2019re from, what part of the island you\u2019re from, but also the diaspora.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Steelers<\/p>\n

Steelers owner Art Rooney II, whose family emigrated from Ireland, says a strong international presence is crucial to the NFL\u2019s future. | Joe Sargent\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The two biggest days of the year at the stadium are the All-Ireland senior finals in hurling and Gaelic football. Still, Croke Park also hosts lower-profile matches, including junior championships and home games for Dublin\u2019s inter-county teams. It\u2019s also used as a concert venue. In between this year\u2019s All-Ireland finals and Sunday\u2019s NFL game, the stadium hosted two nights of Oasis\u2019s sold-out reunion tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Croke Park, the GAA has also evolved over the decades. The organization has, understandably, long been wary of foreign influence. For decades, its official rules banned GAA members from playing or even watching \u201cany imported game which is calculated to injuriously affect our National Pastimes.\u201d Put more simply, members of GAA clubs weren\u2019t allowed to play or watch rugby, soccer or cricket\u2014sports viewed as reminders of Britain\u2019s oppression. That rule was repealed in 1971, but an adjacent rule remained on the books that prohibited \u201cBritish\u201d sports from being played on GAA pitches. This became a source of controversy in the mid-2000s when the Lansdowne Road Stadium, the home of Ireland\u2019s national soccer and rugby teams, was set to be demolished and replaced. The national teams needed another large stadium to call home during the redevelopment. After much consternation, the GAA agreed to allow the soccer and rugby teams to play home matches at Croke Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big deal when they allowed rugby and soccer to be played in Croke Park,\u201d says Denis Walsh, a columnist for the Irish Times. \u201cThere was a lot of opposition to it among hardcore GAA people who saw soccer and rugby as being representations of Britishness, even though those games are very popular in Ireland. It took a lot of persuasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL\u2019s trip to Croke Park is much less fraught because American football isn\u2019t viewed as a threat to squeeze out Ireland\u2019s indigenous games the way some see soccer and rugby. The financial benefit to the GAA from renting out the stadium to the NFL is also significant. The GAA is a volunteer-led organization. Its players are all amateurs, which means that more than 80% of its revenue is reinvested into its clubs all around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a question of utilizing the stadium as best we can for the benefit of the organization as a whole,\u201d Milton says. \u201cEighty-three percent of [the revenue that] comes in here goes back out [to the clubs].\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have extortionate player wages to pay. Obviously, we contribute to the players and their well-being through their organization called the Gaelic Players Association, but 83% goes back out. If you drive around Ireland any night of the week, you\u2019ll see impressive facilities with floodlights, our clubhouses and pitches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Croke<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose it\u2019s a cathedral of Irish sport, but it\u2019s more than just Irish sport,\u201d GAA director of communications Alan Milton says of Croke Park. | Blat Garcia\/Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n

Croke Park has hosted American football previously on a couple of occasions. Two Britain-based U.S. Air Force teams played an exhibition there in 1953; Notre Dame beat Navy there in \u201996; and Penn State beat UCF in 2014. This won\u2019t be the Steelers\u2019 first time playing at the stadium, either, having previously had a preseason game there in 1997.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fun trip,\u201d Rooney says of that first game. \u201cOne of the fun parts about it was that the Bears were our opponent over there. The Rooney family and the Halas-McCaskey families go way back, and so we had a Waterford Crystal trophy that we gave to the winner, and my mother was very happy that we won the crystal trophy for that game. So it was a little different than your run-of-the-mill preseason game, let\u2019s put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s game between Pittsburgh and Minnesota will be a continuation of the dual trends of American football\u2019s increased presence in Dublin and the NFL\u2019s ongoing quest for international eyeballs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

College football has become an annual fixture in Dublin, with Power 4 teams playing at Aviva Stadium, built on the site of the old Lansdowne Road Stadium, the home of Ireland\u2019s national soccer and rugby teams. Two top-25 teams, Kansas State and Iowa State, opened their seasons there this year with a 24\u201321 Cyclones victory on Aug. 23. It was the fourth consecutive year that college football had been played at the Aviva. Two more games have already been announced for 2026 and 2027 (North Carolina vs. TCU, followed by Pittsburgh vs. Wisconsin).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first regular-season NFL game played outside North America was in 2007, when the Giants and Dolphins played in London. The NFL has played at least one game in London every year since (except for 2020, because of COVID-19) and in \u201922 began extending its reach to mainland Europe with a Buccaneers-Seahawks game in Munich. Two games in Frankfurt, Germany, followed in 2023, and the NFL returned to Munich last season. The Steelers-Vikings game in Dublin is one of seven games on foreign soil this year, the most international games in a single season. Along with the Chiefs-Chargers opener in S\u00e3o Paolo and three London games, the NFL will also be making its debut in Berlin (Colts-Falcons on Nov. 9) and Madrid (Dolphins-Commanders on Nov. 16). The league will head to Australia in 2026.<\/p>\n

As a result, and as a result of the NFL\u2019s increased presence on the other side of the Atlantic, Irish people are much more interested in and much more familiar with American football.<\/p>\n

\"Steelers<\/p>\n

The Steelers played the Bears at Croke Park in a preseason game in 1997. | Courtesy of NFL<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that the difference in just the awareness of the Steelers and American football in the country is just dramatically different than it was back in \u201997,\u201d Rooney says. \u201cI mean, there are real fans there. They understand the game, they want to root for us, and so it\u2019s just exciting to see how much progress has been made over there in the last couple of decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intense fan interest in Ireland led the NFL to prioritize Dublin as the host of a regular-season game as it continues to expand its international presence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the most apparent ways was the number of Irish fans that were coming to games in London,\u201d says Henry Hodgson, the general manager of NFL UK. \u201cSo we were aware that there was a demand for the NFL in Ireland. Through the global markets program<\/a>, we also had the catalyst of the Steelers wanting to choose Ireland as their global market to focus on. With that, I think that really created the momentum for us to collectively do more in the market. Very quickly, we saw how much fandom there was for the Steelers as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not to say that there aren\u2019t other markets and other cities that we continue to look at now, but Ireland pushed its way quite quickly to the front of the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL has also seen a couple of Irish players enter the league in recent years. Jude McAtamney and Charlie Smyth are kickers on the practice squads of the Giants and Saints, respectively, and both played high-level Gaelic football before making the switch to the gridiron.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like in the same way that maybe Australia 10, 15, 20 years ago, the pipeline of punters was finding their way into the NFL, it feels like there\u2019s an emerging pathway for Irish kickers\u2014a lot of them from from GAA\u2014who could find their way into into the NFL as well,\u201d Hodgson says. \u201cI think that\u2019s another kind of exciting piece, and was certainly a contributor to Ireland\u2019s interest in the NFL, which has then led to a game in Ireland, has just been how proud they are of the Irish players that have [signed with NFL teams].\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL is highly intentional with its approach to international expansion, though. It isn\u2019t just about hosting one-off games in far-flung cities. The league wants to make sure that wherever it goes, it\u2019s building a sustainable fan base. Hodgson doesn\u2019t want the NFL\u2019s international games to be \u201ccookie cutter\u201d or have the league feel \u201cwe\u2019re like the traveling circus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Singer<\/p>\n

The Chiefs and Chargers played the season\u2019s first international game in S\u00e3o Paulo, where Colombian pop star Karol G performed the halftime show. | Amanda Perobelli\/Reuters via Imagn Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s being done in a way where we\u2019re looking at how do you develop an NFL fan base in a market,\u201d Hodgson says. \u201cAnd then what part does playing a game there play in developing that fan base\u2014and sort of when\u2019s the right moment to do that? Is it as a catalyst to springboard more fandom or is it a reward for the fans that already exist?\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL also wants to strike a balance between bringing its own distinctly American brand of entertainment to the world and respecting the local culture in the cities it visits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a mini Super Bowl is a great descriptor for this,\u201d Hodgson says. \u201cThat comes with the cultural pieces that you would find with the Super Bowl. For the most part, especially when you\u2019re going into new cities, what people know the NFL for is a great sporting spectacle but also then the entertainment piece. We want to make sure that we have exciting, locally relevant, culturally relevant halftime shows and other entertainment pieces built into the games.\u201d<\/p>\n

This season\u2019s record number of international NFL games is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Commissioner Roger Goodell said last year that he hopes to have as many as 16 annual games abroad, an increase that would come in conjunction with adding an 18th regular-season game. (The longer schedule would \u201copen up more inventory to allow us to play more globally,\u201d he said in November<\/a>.) Speculation about a potential Super Bowl in London has been percolating for years, and Goodell confirmed in 2023<\/a> that it was something the league had explored.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rooney says a strong international presence is \u201cvery important\u201d to the league\u2019s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the league wants to have a large international presence and compare our league to the other sports leagues that have international followings,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I think it\u2019s something that\u2019s important to the future of the league if we want to grow to compete with and really be in the same sort of category as some of the soccer leagues and Formula One and things like that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Outside<\/p>\n

The NFL has played at least one game in London every year since 2007, except for 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something ironic about the ultimate American sports league\u2019s quest for world domination, including a stop at this quintessentially Irish stadium. The other stadiums that have hosted or will host overseas NFL games are undoubtedly iconic. They include Wembley Stadium in London, the Bernab\u00e9u in Madrid and Munich\u2019s Allianz Arena\u2014some of the most famous soccer stadiums in the world. But none of them are tied to their home country\u2019s national identity in the same way that Croke Park is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Steelers-Vikings game in Dublin is primarily an opportunity for the NFL to expand its global footprint, but it should also be an opportunity for American fans to familiarize themselves with one of the most iconic sporting venues in the world\u2014and a stadium and a sport that are unlike anything we have in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The All-Ireland senior hurling final in late July between Cork and Tipperary was the most remarkable sporting event I\u2019ve ever attended. I spent much of the previous day talking to Irish people who\u2019d come from all over the country for the match about what Croke Park and the GAA means to them. From the moment I stepped outside my hotel on game day, the significance was evident. Every pub I passed on the two-mile cab ride to the stadium was jammed with people in Cork and Tipperary jerseys. Street vendors sold cords of thread in each team\u2019s colors for supporters to drape around their shoulders, tie around their wrists or knot in their hair\u2014and almost everyone bought one. I could imagine these same streets and pubs soon filled with fans wearing NFL jerseys.<\/p>\n

Milton had told me to expect a late-arriving crowd, explaining that most fans would linger in the pubs until close to game time before making their way to the stadium. So when I turned the corner onto Jones\u2019 Road roughly 20 minutes before the stadium gates were set to open and more than two hours before the start of the match, I was shocked by the sea of people assembled in the street. This was the first time that local rivals Cork and Tipperary, the two most successful counties in the history of the All-Ireland hurling championship, had met in a final, and the fans were raring to go.<\/p>\n

On a personal level, the fact that it was Cork vs. Tipperary was unbelievable. All eight of my great-grandparents were born in Ireland. One great-grandfather on my father\u2019s side (Denis Walsh, not to be confused with the journalist quoted above) was from Cork. On my mother\u2019s side, one great-grandmother (Mary Brennan) was from Cork, and the other (Nora O\u2019Dwyer) was from Tipperary. What are the odds that those would be the two teams playing in a match I\u2019d spent so long dreaming of seeing? The night before the game, I\u2019d leaned into the family aspect of the experience by going to a pub called The Duke, where my fourth-great-grandfather, William Gartland, had been living when he died in 1882.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside the stadium, the atmosphere was enough to give me goosebumps. The highlight of the pregame ceremony was when the two teams paraded around the perimeter of the field\u2014a bit of pomp and circumstance unique to the Gaelic games that allows the tension to build inside the stadium as the rival fans try to cheer loudest when their team passes in front of their section. The fans then channeled all that energy into singing the national anthem. In the U.S., the frequency with which the anthem is performed can make it feel perfunctory. At Croke Park on All-Ireland final day, though, the anthem is an incredibly moving experience. There is no celebrity at midfield with a microphone\u2014only an instrumental track piped in over the sound system as 82,300 Irish people sing the anthem in the language the British spent centuries trying to eradicate. It was in that moment that I understood what Milton meant when he said that All-Ireland Sunday at Croke Park is \u201cthe day when lots of people feel the most Irish\u2014even more so than St. Patrick\u2019s Day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hours after the final, I was in a pub in the center of town and struck up a conversation with a man named Neil McManus, a former inter-county hurler for Antrim who had been part of the BBC broadcast of the match. When I told McManus who I was and what had brought me to Dublin, his eyes lit up and he called across the room to a man named Shane.<\/p>\n

\u201cShane, you have to meet Dan,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shane looked like most of the other men in the bar\u2014average build, early 30s, holding a beer. But Shane, McManus told me, was Shane O\u2019Donnell, the reigning Hurler of the Year. Translated into American terms, he was the MVP of the league. His team, County Clare, had won the 2024 All-Ireland but had fallen short this year. And here he was, in a bar after the championship game, hanging out with a bunch of regular folks and not getting constantly mobbed for selfies. It\u2019s like if Josh Allen had blended in with the crowd at a bar on Bourbon Street after last season\u2019s Super Bowl. That\u2019s what makes the Gaelic games special. They simultaneously feel larger-than-life and intensely local.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thousands of American NFL fans will make the trip to Dublin this weekend to see their team play and will undoubtedly make lifelong memories there. The NFL is hoping to tap into what makes the experience of being in Dublin on an All-Ireland Sunday so special, as the league looks to export its game to every corner of the globe. Just don\u2019t expect to run into Aaron Rodgers or Justin Jefferson in a pub after the final whistle.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I lost track of how many times I got full-body chills while at Croke Park in Dublin in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-166043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}