On September 28th the Minnesota Vikings play the Pittsburgh Steelers in Croke Park; the first time ever an official NFL game has been played in Dublin. It’s a big occasion on the Dublin sporting calendar as the city becomes a faux tailgating ancestral playground awash with followers of the gridiron. Away from the roar of Croker, this burgeoning game is gaining a steady foothold in the sporting realms of our citizens eager to be involved in a sport that takes no prisoners. We sent Hugh Strain, a US collegiate commentator on the sport out to Castleknock, home of the West Dublin Rhinos, to chat to the people who are making a difference at grassroots level.
American football in Ireland is growing, and rapidly too. A game that has become the Sunday tradition of American citizens has been continuing to expand to Europe for decades now, and the Irish are the next group to catch the bug. American Football Ireland, the national governing body of American football, is recognized by Sport Ireland and the Federation of Irish Sports, while working to become an associate member of the International Federation of American Football (IFAF). Today, 20 clubs are competing across three senior leagues: Premier Division, Division I, and Division II. The Premier Division is home to the top clubs in the nation, whereas Division I and Division II host the growing squads that aren’t quite there with their development.
Each season is highlighted by the Shamrock Bowl, AFI’s Super Bowl. It’s a match between the top two clubs in the nation. In 2024, UCD American Football defeated the Dublin Rebels 36-14 in Shamrock Bowl XXXVI.
In early April, I had the chance to go see what an American football game is like here in Dublin. The West Dublin Rhinos and the Louth Mavericks, two Division I clubs as part of AFI, faced off at Castleknock College. About 400-500 people were in attendance to watch, from family and friends of players competing to fans coming to check out the American sport in Ireland. After it was all said and done, the Mavericks emerged victorious 68-22. The match was full of energy and intensity. Players were passionate, hollering on the sidelines for their respective clubs.
It’s clear the folks competing in AFI have an emotional connection to the game and want to see it continue to expand in Ireland. The league itself isn’t limited to Irish natives, as players from all over Europe have come to join in the fun of AFI.
Darragh Maher, an offensive lineman for the Rhinos, knows the interest is there, and at this point, it’s about bringing the attention of the game to the youth of the nation.
“I feel it’s important that we make sure we tie in our local league as much with preparation for the NFL game or for the college game, because the amount of times I’ve gone to people, I’ve told them that I play for the West Dublin Rhinos, that there’s a league, the confusion that they don’t know that there was even a league here, especially when we go on recruitment days and stuff like that. I think a huge thing that we’re trying to push here now and we’re going to be creating in the near future is a youth team. So at the moment to play American football in Ireland, you have to be 18 or over. So with a youth league, you can actually get involved from 15 to 18, and that gives you an introduction to playing football. It gets you involved from an early age, so that when you turn 18 and you play the senior side, it’s not that big of a jump. You already know the fundamentals, you know offense/defense, you know schemes, you know how to catch, throw, block, or whatever you need to do.”
As of now, most players around AFI don’t even begin playing American football until their mid-to-late 20s, if not later. Maher himself began at age 26, he says. And with COVID taking time away, and the growth of the game in Ireland being fairly new, it can be difficult to advance the skill of the game, with most of AFI’s players having a somewhat short time frame in which their bodies will allow them to play at a high level. American football is also a complicated game to learn, and getting lads to start as teenagers to stress the fundamentals for a few years could be extremely beneficial to the game’s growth here.
Sean McVeigh, a current offensive assistant coach for the Rhinos and a former professional American football player in Switzerland, knows first-hand how difficult it can be for guys in their late 20s or early 30s to pick up the sport, which is why the league needs clinics and exposure to youth for the game to continue to blossom.
“But for as far as growing the game, we need equipment, you know, coaching clinics,” McVeigh said. “And as well as its coaching on a grassroots level. So, you know, we don’t want guys coaching for the highest level. We want those kinds of, it’s like high school freshmen level of coaching. A lot of these guys are picking up football for the first time at age, you know, 28, that’s hard. We want the foundational coaching points, not the deep Sean McVay [Los Angeles Rams head coach], Kyle Shanahan [San Francisco 49ers head coach] stuff. That’s not what Europe needs right now. It’s the foundational stepping point, football 101 stuff we need.”
With all of the efforts that the NFL is putting into trying to continue to grow American football in Ireland, the youth is where that is beginning. The NFL established a flag football league in Ireland as part of NFL Flag, the league’s official flag football program, in 2024 in partnership with AFI. In the first-ever NFL Flag National Championships, Green Lanes School from Dublin won the title and had the opportunity to travel to the 2025 NFL Pro Bowl Games in Orlando, Florida. The flag football league is the NFL’s main effort to start football young in Ireland and have kids become passionate about the game to the point where it can become more relevant over time.
The first NFL game coming to Dublin later this year will also be a huge stepping stone and a massive opportunity for AFI squads to recruit potential prospects. The Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t just chosen at random, but were selected due to the organization’s front office ties with Ireland. The president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Art Rooney II, has family from Derry, County Down in Northern Ireland. The late Dan M. Rooney, Art’s father, served as a US ambassador to Ireland from 2009-12 and was a co-founder of the Ireland Funds Charity.
“We are very excited to be the designated team in the first regular season game to be played in Ireland this upcoming season,” Rooney II said. “The opportunity for the Pittsburgh Steelers to play in Ireland is truly special, not only because of the Rooney family history there, but also to play in front of the growing number of Steelers fans in Ireland. We are thrilled to be part of this historic event to represent Pittsburgh in a game that brings the NFL to the great sports fans in Ireland.”
Although it’s phenomenal exposure for the game of American football itself to be recognized in Ireland with an NFL game, the world’s premier American football league, it’s also an incredible outlet for AFI coaches and players to find new potential recruits. Although fan attendance has continued to grow, the opportunity for AFI teams to pitch the game in front of tens of thousands of people, all of whom will be at Croke Park for an American football game itself, is as phenomenal an opportunity as AFI could ask for. Daithi Hosford, the head coach of the Rhinos, thinks it’s a chance he and the rest of the club need to take advantage of. When speaking on potential coaching and player clinics and things of that nature in the future, I asked Hosford if he thinks an NFL game in Dublin puts them at a bigger advantage to do that.
“Yes 100%,” Hosford said. “Yeah, it does, like we’ve seen it this year. If you only have to look at our jersey to see the amount of sponsors we have on it, because we’re starting to get more companies that want to come and help us out, that want to be attached to football. They see the growth potential in the game and they want to come and be attached to it…More sponsors means more money, means better equipment. We’re at the end of a life cycle of our equipment that we’re looking to change up. But again, the more money that’s there, the easier that becomes, so the easier and better equipment you have, the more you get people to stay, because we have seen people come along. It’s an expensive sport to play. Helmets, pads, girdies, boots, the whole line, you’re talking about eight or nine hundred quid before you seven start the game, and having the sponsor’s side to help with that, it’s just outrageous.”
Those involved with AFI right now want to be the pioneers of what they hope to be the long-term growth of American football in Ireland. As they continue to stress the youth to come out and play, mixed with the NFL and college football games played here annually, the exposure is there, and now it just takes resources to really elevate the sport here and put lads around it in the best position to succeed. In addition to the NFL game coming to Dublin next season, college football in America also helps to expose the sport in Ireland with the annual Aer Lingus College Football Classic, which began in 1988. In 2025, Kansas State University will face off against Iowa State University at Aviva Stadium on August 23rd. The 2026 and 2027 fixtures have also been announced. In 2026, Texas Christian University will play the University of North Carolina on August 29th, and in 2027 the University of Pittsburgh will go up against the University of Wisconsin on August 28th.
With all of these efforts to get eyes on American football in Ireland, it seems inevitable that eventually the sport will become a mainstay throughout the nation. Although the GAA still dominates, both Gaelic football and hurling provide a pathway to American football with its similar rules and intense style of play. Interestingly, many of the members of the West Dublin Rhinos had a history with GAA games, and American football practically fell into their laps. For some, all it took was a little real-life exposure to the game after watching it and seeing it on television for years. Once they got to play it first-hand, they caught the bug.
“So, obviously I played rugby and Gaelic growing up, but I have first cousins in Boston as every Irish person does, and they were obviously big [New England] Patriots fans,” McVeigh said. “They got us into Madden. My brother, at the time, it was all, ‘the [Indianapolis] Colts are pretty good.’ Peyton Manning is there. [Tom] Brady/Manning rivalry, so he became a Colts fan, and then those two guys talking to each other in group chats and, you know, family gatherings, just football was around me. And so I was always just kind of a bit of a fan, playing fantasy football for a while. Then I went to UCD, they had a team, which was the first exposure I got to it being in Ireland, or Europe in general. And I just needed a break from Gaelic and rugby at that stage, just thought I’d pick it up for a year and, four years later, I’m still playing it and, you know, got the bug straight away.
While the transition from Gaelic or rugby to American football is becoming more common, sometimes it happens out of nowhere. Hosford said that his entire American football career happened by a complete fluke. “My whole American football career is an accident,” Hosford said. “I turned up here, about in the 2014 season, to watch my brother who was playing here, and they were short. There were short numbers, and they got me to register for the game the following week, and I was supposed to only play two games. And then they came back, so I played for about nine seasons. We went to Division I ball in 2018. We played Shamrock Bowl football for a couple of years and then I left. I was a special teams coach for a little while, and I was also the team manager for a little while, and then when our last head coach left, it kind of fell on me by accident.”
Now, with American football continuing to grow, some of Ireland’s most talented players are beginning to head to the United States, both at the college football and NFL levels. The NFL established the International Player Pathway Programme, designed to give international players chances in the premier league of American football.
Charlie Smyth, a former GAA goalkeeper for Down, became the first Irish member of the league’s IPPP to ink a deal with an NFL franchise in 2024, earning a three-year contract with the New Orleans Saints as a kicker. Daniel Whelan, a punter from Wicklow, played college football at the University of California-Davis and currently plays for the Green Bay Packers. Whelan, who made his NFL debut in 2023, became the first Irishman to play in the NFL since 1985.
Other Irish athletes are beginning to make their way over to the States at the collegiate level as well. Andy Quinn, a former rugby player at Blackrock College, committed to play at Boston College as a kicker in the fall of 2025.
American football is gearing up for big growth across Ireland in the coming years, and with the NFL’s efforts to grow the game on the island, it seems inevitable that more and more athletes will make the transition. American football clubs are also beginning to give athletes chances who didn’t even grow up playing American football, as Smyth, Whelan, and Quinn exhibit. The AFI’s clubs are passionate about growing the game here in Ireland, and with the youth continuing to get more involved as time goes on, those involved with the game look to continue to skyrocket its popularity and bring it to a bigger stage, establishing themselves as the pioneers of American football in Ireland.
Words: Hugh Strain
Images: Kate Kotly
Email rhinos18reg@gmail.com for more info on how to join or americanfootball.ie for general info countrywide.
