At some point in the next five years we’re likely to witness the Pittsburgh Steelers play another international game. While a Steelers game in Mexico is certainly an option, team president Art Rooney II said Thursday during an interview on 93.7 The Fan that a future game in Ireland is also a possibility.
“We’ll, we’d certainly like to play a game over there,” Rooney said Thursday we hen asked about the possibility of a future Steelers game in Ireland. “My dad [Dan Rooney] would have loved to have seen us play another game. As you may know, we did play a preseason game over there in the nineties and he was always hoping we’d get a chance to do that again. So you never know, maybe we’ll pull it off at some point.”
The last time the Steelers played in Ireland was in 1997 when they played the Chicago Bears during the preseason at Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland in a game that was part of the ‘American Bowl’ series. The Steelers won that game 30-17.
Art Rooney’s father, the late Chairman Dan Rooney, served as the United States Ambassador to Ireland from 2009-12 and during that time he talked openly about how he’d like to see the Steelers return to Ireland.
“I of course would like it to be the Steelers, but it could be anyone else,” Dan Rooney was quoted in 2011 as saying. “The league does want it to be successful, so they would try it with the big teams that would generate the interest. I think the Steelers would generate the interest here, but then I am a little biased.”
