'We have to win this game...' Irish pride matters for Rooney family as Pittsburgh Steelers clash with Vikings in Croke Park

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Steelers legend Jerome Bettis tells of journey from Detroit streets to fairytale Super Bowl ending

THERE'S more than points to play for on Sunday when the Pittsburgh Steelers clash with the Minnesota Vikings at Croke Park.

The game is about pride for the Rooney family who have owned the Steelers for close to a century now since Arthur J. Rooney (AKA 'The Chief') bought the club (then the Pittsburgh Pirates) for $2500 in the 1930s.

Since then successive generations of the family - whose roots go back to James and Mary Rooney who emigrated from Newry to Canada in the mid-1800s - have guided the fortunes of the five-time Super Bowl winners.

The late Dan Rooney (son of 'The chief') was a regular at Croke Park as a GAA fan and had an input into the rebuilding of the stadium in the 1990s so it is fitting that the Steelers are part of the first-ever regular season NFL game to be played in Ireland.

Steelers legend Jerome Bettis says winning on 'home' soil will mean everything to the Rooneys and he recalled how Patricia Rooney (Dan's wife) felt before the Steelers played a pre-season game at Croke Park in 1997.

"Mrs Rooney told her husband, the late Dan Rooney: 'We have to win the trophy!' It was a mandate, it was a mandate that we win the game and we won like 31 to 17, it wasn't close.

"So I can guarantee you, there is a mandate on Sunday: We-have-to-win-this-game.

"The heritage is so important to them and it should be. I believe that it's going to be a point of emphasis, let's put it that way."

BETTIS admits he doesn't know where he'd be if football hadn't come along.

The Steelers legend known as 'The Bus', a Super Bowl winner in 2006 with a smile almost as broad as his shoulders, wouldn't have been in Newry, that's for sure.

American Football saved him and he went from the street life in Detroit to college ball with 'The Fighting Irish' at Notre Dame, to the Los Angeles Rams and then, in 1996, to the Steelers.

"Yeah, I grew up in a difficult environment in the city," said Bettis on his visit to St Mary's High School in Newry.

"And I didn't play football, I didn't play football until high school and the only reason I played football was to get a scholarship.

"I was fortunate enough to get into a foundation that invested in young people. They had mentoring programmes, tests that you take for school entrance and they also had a football camp that they provided for the kids.

"Everything was free and, back then, if it had any cost to it, I couldn't go because we didn't have any money.

"So this camp really was the camp that provided me the ability to fall in love with the game of football and had I not fallen in love with the game of football, I don't know where I would be.

"So this foundation, it really changed my stripes in such a way that I fell in love with football. It set me on my journey and through that same foundation, I got the mentoring, I got the testing, and I was able to take the test, pass the test, get to college.

"I went to University of Notre Dame - 'Fighting Irish' - so there's a love affair there as well.

"For me, it started with that foundation. It gave me a sense of belonging and from there I was able to have a lot of success."

A larger-than-life character in every sense, Bettis was in St Mary's High School along with Dan Rooney. Dan's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather James Rooney left Newry in the mid-1800s for Canada and the family have retained close links with county Down in particular and Ireland in general ever since.

Dan's grandfather, the late Dan Rooney, an annual visitor to Newry, was running the club when Bettis arrived in 1995.

"I was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams," explained the former running back.

"I played there for three years and then I had an opportunity to pick the team that I wanted to play for.

"They gave me permission to seek a trade and I fell in love with the Pittsburgh Steelers and what they stood for, what the organisation was all about, and I decided to go to Pittsburgh. And from day one I had immediate success so I chose right."

As he says, he was an instant hit at the Steelers. He ran for over 1,000 yards in the 1996 season, scoring 11 touchdowns but the success he craved didn't come until his final season.

He had actually retired after the 2004 campaign but was talked into a 'last dance' by Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Fairytale endings are few and far between in sport but Bettis had one...

"I won a Super Bowl in my hometown in the last game that I ever played," he says with a beaming smile.

"So it was definitely a fairytale ending to my career. Not bad, not bad at all!"

His is a classic rags-to-riches story and his advice to anyone who would seek to follow in his footsteps is: "Love what you do".

"How do you get that success? It's hard work," he explained.

"How does hard work happen? I tell everyone, if I had to give a word of advice, is to love what you do because if you love what you do, then you will fall in love with the process of what you do.

"And then you're willing to work hard and it's not hard work, because it's what you love, right? And so you're willing to sacrifice and do all those things because it's what you love.

"So I tell all the young people, if it's a sport you love, if it's hurling, if it's Gaelic Football... Love it, fall in love with it and if you love it, you'll love the process and if you love the process, that's when you become special."

AS for Sunday's game, Bettis is so confident of a Steelers victory that he even predicts the final score - 27-21.

"I'm not hoping, I'm expecting, a Steelers victory and I think it's goanna be a good game," he said.

"You're gone see some fireworks. The defences need to really show up but I'm thinking 27-21, the Steelers win. They better.

"The field may feel different, the stadium may feel different so you have those small things but, from a player perspective, a field is a field. Once you get on the field, it's time to go to work.

"The guys could play this game in the parking lot. So to say: 'We're in Ireland and the conditions aren't great', that's not an issue. So I don't expect the fact that we're in Ireland will affect either team.

"Both of them will have been here the same amount of time and it (the travel) won't be significant at all.