Gavin Cooney

THE NFL’S FIRST visit to Ireland won’t be short of cheerleaders at least. 

Last week brought realisation of the long-flagged prospect that the NFL’s international series would later this year include a game at Croke Park, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers will play the host against A.N. Other.

The announcement has been with the usual quota of jubilant politicians, fiddle music, and ballyhooing about our old friend, the Economic Impact. Missing, however, was any reaction which suggested that this wasn’t such a great idea. 

Even Ireland’s confirmation as co-hosts of Euro 2028 was met with some scepticism here, a fact which dismayed senior figures at the FAI, who complained to this columnist that none of their UK bid partners were met with similar ambivalence. 

The NFL game at Croke Park, however, has been given a universally positive response. This column is not minded to agree. 

The government told RTÉ they are committing €10 million of taxpayers’ money to helping to pay for the event, which is a healthy whack of cash, given the core State allocation to the GAA last year was €13.3 million and the fact the Steelers were recently valued at $5.3 billion. You’d imagine they might have been able to stump up the money we have to pay. 

But, unlike sport, this is one event in which the State can see an immediate return on their investment, and were quick to point out to RTÉ that the weekend of the game will generate somewhere in the region of €64 million for the Irish economy. 

We have written before of how the State cannot understand sport without seeing the financials of the whole thing: it’s why the must-have sports administrative trend of 2024 was an Economic Impact Report. (The GPA this week followed suit with their own: only in Ireland can a representative body sanctify their amateur status by slapping a monetary value on it.) This is why the State are so happy to stump up cash to bring the NFL to Croke Park rather than, say, help give Katie Taylor the valedictory stage many feels she deserves.

But, hey, an injection of cash to the economy can hardly be a bad thing, right? And given the GAA are genuinely one of the most equitable distributors of wealth in Irish history, there’s a legitimate trickle down effect of money pouring into Croke Park. 

This column has less of an issue with the money than the philosophy underpinning its thirsty reception, as it is part of an attitude that has slowly changed Dublin from a city which exists for living to one that exists for visiting. The visit of the NFL is the latest high-profile event which will justify the existence of price-gouging hotels, where profit has led to proliferation at the expense of housing. 

Beyond that is the moral question of embracing America’s game in the time of Trump. In recent decades, the NFL has become one of the largest vehicles of America’s cultural imperialism: see how their games became a stage to celebrate the US military following the post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan. The NFL has never afforded players the same room to protest as the NBA, either: first Colin Kaepernick was blackballed and then the NFL introduced punishments for any players who deigned to protest the American anthem. 

The NFL resiled from that position a few years later during Joe Biden’s presidency, but now Trump is back in office and the league is once again showing its breathtaking expediency. With Trump making history on Sunday as the first sitting president ever to attend the Super Bowl, the NFL marked the occasion by removing  “End Racism” slogans from the endline and replacing them with the altogether more banal and vague “Choose Love.” (Kapernick is doubtlessly unable to resist pointing out the irony that the league are suddenly in favour of bowing down on one knee.) 

So why is Ireland choosing to endorse a sports organisation as irredeemably void of morality as the NFL? Or, at least, why is nobody disputing whether this is a good idea? The NFL cosied up to Trump at the end of a week in which he advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza: while Paddy is willing to condemn American remarks, he doesn’t want to lose out on American dollars.

Of course the Irish economic miracle is founded on its openness to American dollars, and successive governments have done a fine job in riding two horses. Mary Harney, then the Enterprise minister, pithily summed it up at the start of the century by saying that Ireland is “closer to Boston than Berlin”. 

But the world is changing now, and the decades-long assumption that America will always be a friend to us is no longer any guarantee. To indulge his isolationism, Trump can use the carrot of a slash to his own corporate tax rate or the stick of a trade war with the EU – in either scenario, Ireland is a sitting duck. If that transpires, holding our nose to those aspects of American policy we don’t like is not going to be as lucrative as it once was.  

Official Ireland has always enjoyed picturing its own image in the American mind; that of the small country of poetic eloquence, quiet genius and clear values which punches far above its weight on a global scale, whose emigrant history has been parlayed into some kind of irresistible influence for good over American leaders. Think of it as the acceptable face of begorrah. 

All of that is likely to be celebrated at Croke Park when the NFL comes to mind, by which point it will be hopelessly out of date: Trump will disturb this image, given all he has in his mind is himself. 

Hosting the NFL in Ireland later this year will be at best be an anachronism, and at worst be a tacit approval of Trump’s rogue, regressive regime. Either way, it’s not worth the hassle.