In revealing that the Steelers will host a regular season game in Croke Park next season, the NFL confirmed news that at differing points had felt both inconceivable and inevitable.
Pittsburgh have been making noises about a game in Dublin for the last number of years, while college football has found a regular home away from home in the city for over a decade.
Aided in no small part by the likes of Green Bay punter Dan Whelan, and kickers Jude McAtamney and Charlie Smyth, of the New York Giants and New Orleans Saints, coverage of the sport in the country has never been more extensive.
For fans of a certain vintage, however, the news that the iconic franchise will again play on their own doorstep, this time in a meaningful game, would once have been the stuff of fantasy.
The sound of commissioner Roger Goodell being booed by local fans at the NFL draft each April has become akin to an annual tradition, but his legacy outside of the United States will surely be viewed differently.
Growing revenues, a 17th regular season game and the return of not one but two franchises to Los Angeles have all been key points of his lengthy tenure, but the establishment and expansion of the International Series has perhaps been his boldest move.
Far from universally popular stateside when first introduced in 2007, few would have imagined the day the New York Giants met the Miami Dolphins at a sodden Wembley Stadium that in the future we would see so many games in so many different locales each season.
Several months before that first international game, Croke Park, which holds the Gaelic Athletic Association’s (GAA) biggest games of the season, staged its first rugby fixtures with the Ireland national team using the venue, while the Aviva Stadium was redeveloped between 2007 and 2010.
The stadium in the north of Dublin city had previously been opposed to hosting other sports, but it has become increasingly commonplace with Leinster playing last season’s Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton Saints and a United Rugby Championship derby with Munster in October.
Able to house in excess of 30,000 more fans than the Aviva Stadium, the size of the crowd that can be expected in Dublin no doubt appealed to NFL bosses, as would have the city’s proven track record of hosting some of the college game’s biggest teams.
