Deafening music, fancy dress and repurposed GAA merch on day like no other at Croke Park

It’s so loud, so bewildering and so dazzling in Croke Park just before the NFL teams take the field that it’s like waking up in an arcade game from the 1980s.

“It’s go time. Here we go. We are locked in,” booms a voice over the PA to a soundtrack of Fatboy Slim’s Right Here Right Now. First, the Minnesota Vikings spill onto a smoke-filled pitch. They are quickly followed by Pittsburgh Steelers. The pitch seems to be almost reeling from the over-stimulation.

Tis far from all this Croker was reared.

The hallowed turf is festooned with the trappings of the NFL as Robert Mizzell – the Westmeath-based Louisiana-born country singer – sings the Star Spangled Banner and Lyra sings Amhrán na bhFiann and AC/DC sing Thunderstruck. Obviously.

Then we’re off. And then – almost immediately – we stop again. The Steelers huddle and then we’re off again.

Seconds later, their quarterback is sacked – in the American football sense of the word – so we stop again. And start and stop and start and stop. On it goes for a long time and, before you know it, two hours have passed and it’s still not the second half.

But then, American football and its fans have a strange relationship with time. Many hours before the 2.30pm kick-off on Sunday, the neighbourhood pubs are heaving. The surrounding roads are lined with hawkers selling merchandise. Some hats, scarves and headbands look suspiciously like they’ve been re-purposed from Wexford and Kilkenny’s past days of glory.

When The Irish Times asks one hawker – with a mountain of scarves to shift at 20 quid a pop – where they’d come from, she cackles. “Sure, not even a guard would ask me that.”

Actor Bill Murray wanders into the scene flanked by security men. Despite their presence, or maybe because of it, he’s pretty chilled as he waves to fans.

“Hey Bill, we’re from Germany,” bellow some men who appear to have been in north inner city pubs for some time. “Maybe switch to the lemonade,” he suggests, although his advice is lost in translation as their brows crease with confusion and they swig deeply from their pints.

As game time approaches, the Minnesota folk seem more upbeat than the bookies would suggest is wise.

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Troy Haro is in a full Vikings suit reflecting his commitment and is sure he’ll be celebrating tonight. He already feels like he’s won at life. “I love Dublin,” he says. When asked for his top three highlights, he doesn’t miss a beat: “Guinness, Guinness and Guinness. We’ve been drinking it all day and all night.”

Cris Sirmando is also kitted out in a way that makes his love for the Vikings clear. He has a weird Star Wars-style helmet in the Minnesota colours and a heavy chain draped round his neck. “I do this for home games and away games and once I found out football was coming to Ireland, I was like, ‘it’s going to be history, I’ve got to be there’.”

Devon Burns is dressed like an eighth-century viking princess – if viking princesses wore furry leg warmers and plastic helmets. “Ireland is amazing,” she enthuses. “The people are so welcoming and there’s the culture. It is so beautiful.”

Olaf Sach is German and only started following the NFL seven years ago. He adopted the Vikings for a few reasons, one of which was “because I like purple and I like gold”. He strokes a beard dyed purple and gold for the day that’s in it.

Chuck Mullen flew in from Arkansas. “I’ve been a Steelers fan since the 1970s. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. I retired a year ago and now it’s all about the Steelers. My whole house is black and gold.”

While most fans have dressed for the occasion, Tánaiste Simon Harris is in more neutral clothes as he races down Jones’s Road to meet up with a Fine Gael team campaigning for presidential candidate Heather Humphreys. He is artfully intercepted, but not sacked, by The Irish Times.

“It’s quite the spectacle,” he says with some understatement. “We’re used to maybe just one thing happening on the pitch but in American football, there’s so many different things happening at the one time.”

He’s not wrong. During some breaks, trad bands appear. In others, steel drummers are wheeled out. The game is paused for on-field interviews as cheerleaders twirl. Touchdowns are greeted with wild enthusiasm.

And all this to a booming rock classics soundtrack that wouldn’t be out of place in Copper Face Jacks on a Saturday night. It is sung along to with gusto by most of the 74,500 fans in attendance.

Oh, and Pittsburgh were winning at a canter until the last 10 minutes of normal time (which is six hours in NFL time), when the Vikings staged a stirring comeback. But it was too little, too late so . . . Go Steelers. But do come back.