I landed in Pittsburgh on the Friday and the anniversary of the 2025 NFL Dublin Game sat with me the whole way across the atlantic.
A year ago almost to the day on Monday, the Steelers played the Vikings at Croke Park. It was the first regular-season game the NFL has ever staged in Ireland. 74,512 in the Dublin's iconic arena. Typical weather at times, brilliant noise, and a 24-21 win that still feels slightly unreal when I think about it. The Rooneys' people came from the island. The team treated it like it mattered.
For a lot of us who have followed this franchise from the other side of the Atlantic, it did.
So flying back into the city one year on felt less like a normal away trip and more like closing a circle while embarking on a new chapter - remember, we are weeks away from Paris!
I don't take these weekends lightly. You get the chance to stand in Acrisure for a home game against Cincinnati, on the same weekend the Hall of Honour class is being recognised, and you try not to waste it.
Friday night was the Hall of Honor dinner.
Kevin Colbert, J.T. Thomas and Craig Wolfley. The Class of 2026. For those discovering the Steelers internationally, Colbert built two Super Bowl teams and kept the place winning for the best part of two decades.
Thomas started opposite Mel Blount on three of the 1970s championship sides and, nearly fifty years on, was handed a Super Bowl XIII ring he had missed out on while he was ill. Art Rooney II presented it to him at the dinner.
Thomas looked floored.
That is the word he used later.
Floored.
Wolfley went in posthumously. Guard in the 1980s, then the voice on the radio for years after. Larger than life on the line, then larger than life in the booth. His wife Faith stood up for him.
I have sat through a fair few of these speeches over the years. Most of them are warm. Hers was different. She talked about how Craig would have wanted a recount. How he would have been embarrassed and asked what he was doing up there with the other two. Then she moved past the football and the broadcasting and onto the bits he actually cared about most — Light of Life, the quiet work, the people the organisation looks after when nobody is watching. She said the Steelers set the standard behind the scenes as much as they do on the field. Never needing the credit. Just doing it.
Craig was very good to us in Ireland and he will continue to be missed. I know he would have loved to attend and jump on the mic in both Croke Park and the Stade De France.
It is easy, from Ireland, to romanticise the black and gold and the relationship that we share together. Nights like that remind you the romance has a cost and a memory attached to it.
Sunday was the game.
Let's be clear - the Bengals defence had looked the part through two weeks. They were for real, or at least they had been to that point. Pittsburgh needed to pick it up after the New England loss. Aaron Rodgers and the offence had managed one touchdown in two games. None of that felt sustainable against Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase going into the game - so something had to give.
It was not pretty for long stretches. It was also 30-27 to the home side when the clock hit zero.
Rodgers threw three touchdowns — Roman Wilson early, Ben Skowronek before the end of the first quarter, D.K. Metcalf in the third. Jaylen Warren ran for 127 and caught a few more. Chris Boswell kicked three field goals, the last of them from 33 with a couple of minutes left. Burrow answered everything until he didn't. Derrick Harmon got to him late, the ball came loose, and Sebastian Joseph-Day fell on it. That was the game.
66,000-odd in the building. The usual Terrible Towel noise when it mattered. Halftime brought the three inductees out onto the field, with Faith walking out for Craig. It was different to Friday, but a real connection with the fans.
I stood there on the sidelines postgame and thought about Croke Park again.
Yes, it was a different stadium, different country, same colours. A year ago the Steelers were the away side in Dublin and more than over half the ground still felt like theirs.
This weekend they were home, and the honour being handed out belonged to people who had built the thing the rest of us travel for.
Colbert's drafts.
Thomas's coverage on those Super Bowl teams.
Wolfley's voice telling you what you were watching when you couldn't be there.
The personal bit is simpler than it sounds. Dublin was the first time a lot of Irish Steelers fans saw their team in the flesh without booking a flight to London or further.
It landed.
The queues, the jerseys, the kids who had only ever watched on a screen.
One year later I was back in Pittsburgh watching the same franchise honour the people who kept it standing long enough for that afternoon in Croke Park to happen.
I flew home with the usual ache in the legs (and head!) and a clearer sense of why the anniversary mattered. Not because the result in Dublin was perfect, but because it put the team in front of people who had waited. And because, twelve months on, the Hall of Honour still had room for the ones who did the unglamorous work — the scouting, the blocking, the talking people through the hard afternoons.
One year on, that was the part I will remember longest.
I'll be back, sooner rather than later - like many Irish Steelers fans who will make the trip to Pittsburgh at some stage this season.
