More Irish People Watched Last Night’s England Match Than Last Year’s All-Ireland Final

The 2018 World Cup is coming to a close and if anyone is going to miss it it's the bigwigs at RTÉ. The tournament has been a ratings winner for those at Montrose, especially when England have played and last night was no different.

According to a tweet by RTÉ's Des Cahill, the peak audience for the semi-final between the Three Lions and Croatia was a whopping 1.12 million people.

Irish people clearly love watching the #England football team! @RTE2 had a massive audience last night for the #England - #Croatia game, peaking at 1.12 million!! @RTEsport
— Des Cahill (@sportsdes) July 12, 2018

To put this into perspective, last year's All-Ireland Hurling Final between Galway and Waterford drew in 919,000 viewers while the Football Final between Dublin and Mayo just pipped the England game with a total of 1.14 million people watching.

As well as that, none of Ireland's 2017 Six Nations rugby games came close to the numbers Gareth Southgate's men attracted last night.

This means that last night's match should go down as one of the most watched programmes on RTÉ in 2018.

Sadly, those who tuned into the national broadcaster missed out on an epic Roy Keane moment over on ITV but if you were one of them, you can watch that here.

(header pic: @England on Twitter)