American Football comes to Dublin!

 Aer Lingus College Football Classic 2022

Who doesn't love stadium hot dogs and the spectacle of American Football?! Me! That's for sure.....

So when I saw that Northwestern and Nebraska would be coming to Dublin for the Aer Lingus College Football Classic I knew that a great day was ahead of us and we should definitely go to the game to see a great game of American Football being played on Irish soil.

There were plenty of tickets available and we bought ours the evening before on Tickemaster.  We were unsure which side we were going to end up on when we selected our tickets but got lucky and landed on the home team side of Northwestern (Go Cats!) so were in a really great postion for the half time college bands and the National Anthems at the beginning.  The band and music was really great and we had fun trying to pay attention to the actual players with all of the other distractions like the cheer leaders and dancers. As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog I love the whole spectacle of American Football which to me seems more that just the football but is about everything from the college band and cheer leaders to the fans.

Let me know what you think, do you love the rituals of American Football?!

Aviva Stadium

The football game was on in Aviva Stadium which is about a 10 minute walk from our house.  So for the 5.30pm kick off, we set off about 4.30pm.  The game ended after 9pm and so we rang Rasoi and made an order for Indian takeaway food to pick up when we got to Ranelagh.  As we passed our house, we dropped in and got our bikes for the 2 minute cycle to Rasoi in Ranelagh and then quickly cycled home and were eating dinner by 10pm!!

I should also mention the weather which unusually for Ireland, it behaved itself. It was sunny in the afternoon in the low twenties and then it progressed in to a mild evening, with some football fans bravely wearing shorts and t-shirts. I had layers with me but did start out just wearing a Margaritaville t-shirt (recent purchase on my June trip to Key West!) and then put a jacket on as it got cooler.

Northwestern Wildcats win out in a close finish to Nebraska Huskers

All in all a great evening.....enjoy the pics from the game (in no particular order) and congrats to Northwestern on an exciting win over Nebraska.