‘Bigger than football’ – the Dublin NFL game 100 years in the making

NFL: Minnesota Vikings v Pittsburgh Steelers

Venue: Croke Park, Dublin Date: Sunday 28 September Kick-off: 14:30 BST

Coverage: Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and app from 13:00

When the anthems play at Sunday’s NFL game in Dublin, it will hit different for everyone involved.

For the Irish fans who have longed for the NFL to return after a solitary pre-season game in 1997.

For the league itself, which has shown reverence for being granted the opportunity to play in a historic institution such as Croke Park.

For the fans and players visiting from America, who see this as a bucket-list trip.

And mostly it will hit different for the Rooney family, who have brought one of the NFL’s most-storied franchises to their homeland, almost 100 years after their Irish ancestors founded the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“This game is bigger than football – because of the Rooney family and because we’re in Ireland,” former Steelers player Ike Taylor told the BBC.

Art Rooney’s great-grandparents were among the estimated two million Irish people who emigrated to North America during the Great Famine.

After leaving Newry, County Down in the 1840s, they spent time in Wales and Canada before settling in Pennsylvania.

Art was born there in 1901 and went on to become a multi-sport athlete, earning an athletic scholarship. He played and managed minor league baseball and semi-pro football teams before buying an NFL franchise in 1933 for $2,500 (£1870).

After initially sharing the name of Pittsburgh’s baseball team – the Pirates – the football team was renamed in recognition of the city’s steel industry in 1940.

The Steelers struggled for decades, having a winning record in only eight out of 36 seasons before Chuck Noll became head coach in 1969.

Dan Rooney, the eldest of Art’s five sons, began working in the team’s front office at an early age and was 36 when he became general manager and interviewed Noll.

That sparked a transformation in the team’s fortunes. They moved into a new stadium in 1970 and from 1975, the Steelers won four Super Bowls in six years. They won two more in 2006 and 2009, and now share the record for most Super Bowl wins with the New England Patriots.

Dan Rooney was already running the Steelers’ day-to-day operations before becoming president in 1975.

A year later, he formed a charity with Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the former Ireland rugby player who at the time was president of Pittsburgh-based food giant HJ Heinz.

Now known as the Ireland Funds, the philanthropic group has raised more than $650m (£485m) for thousands of Irish organisations around the world.

And as the NFL began to expand globally, playing pre-season games overseas from 1986, Rooney pushed for a game in Ireland and succeeded in 1997, with the Steelers facing the Chicago Bears at Croke Park.

He also oversaw key changes to the league while serving on several NFL committees, including the 2003 introduction of the Rooney Rule, which requires an ethnic minority candidate to be interviewed for each head coach and general manager vacancy.

That year the eldest of his nine children, Art II, assumed operational control as Steelers president and from 2009 to 2012, Rooney served as the US Ambassador to Ireland, making sure he visited all 32 counties on the island of Ireland.

“The idea was to let the people know that America cared,” he said. “We wanted to do the right thing.”

In 2000, Rooney followed his father into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and in 2013 was inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame.

Upon his death aged 84 in 2017, Irish President Michael D Higgins said Rooney was “deeply committed to Ireland” and that his contributions to peace and reconciliation had left a “real and tangible legacy”.

The Steelers organisation is very much a family business for the Rooneys. Five members of the family still work in the front office, including Art II’s eldest son Dan.

He is currently director of business development and strategy and this week was part of a Steelers contingent that visited Newry, an hour’s drive from Dublin, just across the border in Northern Ireland.

“[While I was] growing up, my grandfather and father always talked about their love for Ireland, so this is a dream come true for the Rooney family,” he told the BBC.

“Making sure we engage with the island and its people is something my grandfather cared deeply about, and we’re doing that in a big way this week.”

While back in his ancestors’ hometown, Rooney announced two scholarships for local pupils via the Ireland Funds, along with grants for their schools.

The team also held a flag football event in Belfast, one of many community events they have organised across the island of Ireland before Dublin becomes the sixth international city to host a regular-season NFL game.

Almost one in 10 Americans have Irish heritage – including NFL executive Peter O’Reilly and Pittsburgh’s new quarterback Aaron Rodgers – which is partly why more than 30,000 international visitors are expected this weekend.

“There’s not another international game where that connection between the team, the owners and the country is this deep,” said O’Reilly.

“Seeing NFL fans in Dublin and such an iconic stadium being transformed, it’s really special.”

Rodgers, a four-time MVP, added: “This game means a lot to all of us so we want to represent the team and the Rooney legacy well.

“Being a part of the first game in Ireland is pretty cool. I have Irish heritage, so I’m very excited to get out there.”

While Rodgers is new to the organisation, head coach Mike Tomlin has been the Steelers’ head coach since 2007 and remembers their former president fondly.

“I think a lot about the late Ambassador Rooney and how fired up he would be about this trip, and how important the development of this trip was for him,” he said.

“Man, you talk about a guy who certainly had a lot of passion for Ireland, and obviously for the Steelers, and then serving as Ambassador. I’m sure he’s going to be smiling down at us this weekend.”