DUBLIN — They’re already storied franchises, but when the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings take to the field at Dublin’s Croke Park on Sunday, they’ll make history as the first NFL teams to play a regular season game in Ireland.
And that has many fans of both teams so stoked that they made their way across the Atlantic to the Irish capital.
“This is the Steelers’ game, and the Vikings are just humbly invited to come get whooped,” Steelers fan Ryan Gray told NBC News earlier this week. Gray, who traveled from Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the game, added he was enjoying “not only Dublin but Ireland as a whole” and he was “very very thankful for that.”
Vikings fans Cindy and Johnny File, who came from Minnesota with their friends Fred and Jerri Menth, were also soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying “the craic,” as it’s known in Ireland, and equally bullish about their team’s chances.
“The terrible towels will be drying tears,” Johnny said before the game at historic Croke Park, which dates to 1891, holds 75,000 people and regularly features soccer, rugby and more national sports like Gaelic football and hurling.
But perhaps the most excited fan of all will be Michael McQuaid, the founder of Pro Football Ireland, who said he has been following the NFL for around 15 years, attending games in the U.K. and the U.S., including four Super Bowls.
“The atmosphere in the city is electric,” McQuaid said. “Every pub is decked out in Steelers and Vikings gear. We’ve also got pubs for teams in the market like the Green Bay Packers, the Kansas City Chiefs, and honestly, you can’t really walk around any corner in the city without seeing a Steelers flag, an NFL flag, or a Vikings flag, and that’s really, really cool.”
“But the most important thing is the Rooney family, the heritage they have,” he said, referring to the Steelers’ owners, whose ancestors emigrated in the 1840s from the city of Newry in what is now Northern Ireland. The city is around 5 miles from the border with Ireland.
Descendants of Art Rooney, who founded the team in 1933, have maintained close links to their Irish heritage. Rooney’s son Daniel M. Rooney would go on to become the Steelers’ chairman and among other things he co-founded the Newry-Pittsburgh Partnership in 1990 to boost business and educational exchanges. He would later serve as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 2009 to 2012; he died in 2017 at 84.
“Talk about the real American dream,” McQuaid said. “They leave in the 1840s at the height of the Irish famine. They go to North America and they return nearly 200 years later with their team, something that they’ve worked their lives on.”
“I know that Dan will be watching down smiling on Sunday,” he added. “I have no doubt about that.”
Ray McAdam, the lord mayor of Dublin, stressed the historic ties between Ireland and the U.S.
“We’re cousins, we’re family,” he said, adding that his ancestors immigrated to the U.S. “to help build the great city of Chicago, the great city of New York, out to L.A. as well. … We’re connected by blood, we’re connected by family.”
The game is also “a big deal” financially for Dublin, McAdam said. “The potential revenue gain to the city, to our hotels, to our pubs, to our restaurants, is massive, and not to mention, then, some of our great cultural and heritage institutions,” he said.
While the full economic impact will not be known until after the game, the benefits are obvious with “planes full of people coming in from the U.S. and around the world into a city that is teeming with NFL fans for a weekend,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, international and league events.
For the NFL, playing in Dublin is about increasing the game’s appeal in countries where other sports are top dog.
“We know that we’re a challenger sport around the world,” O’Reilly said, adding that the league has sent flag football kits to every secondary school in Ireland, as well as holding promotional events across Dublin.
“We’re a strong No. 1 in the U.S., but we’re a challenger, and we embrace that, and want to do that in ways that are, frankly, humble and culturally relevant, and come in and do it in those right ways,” he added.
The NFL has also hosted games in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Brazil and Mexico, and next year Melbourne will host the league’s first game in Australia, where O’Reilly said there has been “so much pent up demand for the NFL.”
“Ireland is a sports crazed country. Australia is a sports crazed country, for sure,” he said, adding that it will be “an incredible spectacle” to see 100,000 fans packed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
In Dublin this week, the atmosphere was friendly but boisterous, undoubtedly aided by a few pints of Guinness.
“We’re running into a lot of Steelers fans in black and gold,” said Dave Johnston, who was touring the country with his wife, Ann.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ann picked her team to win. “Steelers up by seven,” she said.