February 9, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Susan Falvella Garraty
Perhaps Croke Park will be the luckier field. Despite losing the Super Bowl to Green Bay, the speculation that the Pittsburgh Steelers will play a regular season game in Ireland later this year has not abated.
While in Washington en route for Dallas last week, Washington’s ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney took some time to talk football.
Rooney, whose family owns the Steelers, spoke about the possibility that the Steelers might play a regular season game in Dublin.
“It’s a possibility, but not a foregone conclusion that it’s going to happen,” Rooney told Newstalk Radio in Dublin.
“There’s going to be talks. The people at Croke Park are definitely going to talk to the commissioner and see if he would favor it.”
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Rooney said it was premature to give any odds on a Steelers Irish trip but he did say he was 100 percent sure that if the AFC champions were to travel it would not be one of the regularly scheduled home games for the Steelers. Home games in Pittsburgh are sell outs and the wait list for season tickets is generational.
“We would have to be the away team,” insisted Rooney.
Speaking separately to RTE Rooney said, “There is great interest and there is growing interest in the NFL in Ireland. We would be definitely interested in that, and I do think that the people in Croke Park are going to talk to (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell to see if there is a possibility of doing that.”