“Especially if Cork were playing.”
There’s a lot of things you expect to hear on MNF (Monday Night Football), but comparisons between the GAA and the Super Bowl isn’t one of them.
Roy Keane recently attended an American football game where the Green Bay Packers took on the New York Giants at Tottenham’s Hotspur Stadium.
Later, when working alongside Jamie Carragher for Sky Sports on Monday, Keane was analysing the Aston Villa vs Nottingham Forrest game which finished 1-1.
The conversation soon switched to American football however, and when presenter David Jones asked the former Manchester United captain if the Super Bowl was ‘the one big sporting event’ he would choose to go to, the Cork native was quick to explain how it doesn’t compare to the biggest day in the GAA calendar.
“The Super Bowl in America is fantastic, or any American football game in America,” he said.
“But sporting occasion… I do have to say that the hurling All-Ireland final is just really hard to beat, it’s a great day out, especially if Cork were playing, obviously my home town.”
Carragher and Jones were probably surprised by that answer but those who have experienced the magic of the GAA and the spectacle of All-Ireland final day in Croke Park will know exactly what Keane is talking about.
The former Ireland captain was spotted at a few of the Cork games this year, including the Gaelic football Munster final where his county lost out to Kerry.
For a man who has achieved everything there is to achieve in the world of soccer, it’s humbling to see that his roots are firmly still very much in Ireland.
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