It’s big, it’s noisy – and ‘Hack’ is one heck of a player

First you park the prejudices, the cultural snobbery, our Riverdance of Sport to their yardages and completed passes. Then you cast off the wronged look, the wounded mien of never-to-be-turned Gaels mourning for cast out Kerry and Mayo.

Then you suck it all in, you celebrate the giganticism of it all, the pageantry, the excess, the violence.

Florida's Jordan Ozerites was hit five times in the air in a matter of seconds and that was just him chest bumping his way off the pitch after an interception in the second half.

But first the cast and inventory: two parachutists, one on the pitch the other on the railway track; a choir of 17; two three-storey sized flags; two marching bands; three Irish Army soldiers and four marines, all bearing flags; a team of Penn State dancers and two teams of cheerleaders; soft drinks engineers; chair arranging executives; four lieutenants of the tape measure; two team rosters of 100 players each; eight team captains; 24-ish coaches and two F16s drowning out the Star Spangled Banner. Gridiron loves its hardware.

Croke Park razzmatazzed and although it may have been cloudy it was nothing a sunny Floridian mood and the embrace of an Uber energetic afternoon at HQ couldn't change. Penn State and Central Florida brought more of a concert mood than a partisan battle.

With an estimated 20,000 fly-ins there were loyalties but the Irish content that filled most of the stadium to 53,304 built their allegiances on flimsy connections.

Disneyland

“Why are you supporting Florida?” one fan was asked. “I went to Disneyland when I was a kid,” she replied. Good answer.

These were not small enterprises in Ireland for the opening match of the season. The games critics point to a stop-start game but they moved all the time. If they are not on, they are coming on, or going off, or mixing it up, or taking off, or, getting on a kicker like Sean Galvin to punt the restarts.

Galvin had dreams as a 14-year-old in Cork of playing in Croke Park as a footballer. He got his wish but in a different game and after Saturday on the losing side – a dying second, 36-yard field goal from Sam Ficken securing a 26-24 win for Penn State.

It couldn’t have been choreographed any better and we’ve seen it so often. Ronan O’Gara kicking the winner for Munster in the last play of the match.

A little more than a minute before Ficken’s celebration heartbreak had been tattooed into the final narrative. Penn State was about to cough up a late lead and lose like it had to Nebraska, Virginia and Ohio the past couple of years.

They had scored their points and taken the lead. But the match was laced with subtexts. With 1:13 left quarterback Justin Holman ran six yards for Central Florida’s “go-ahead touchdown”’ giving them their first lead of the day.

School record

But Penn State had a quarterback called Christian Hackenberg. “Hack”, a young man in just his second season, threw for 454 yards on Saturday, breaking Zack Mills’s single-game school record of 399 yards.

The most important of those yards came in the run-up to Ficken’s winning field goal as “Hack”, with composure beyond his years, engineered the territory and kept the ball in Penn hands.

As it sailed over the posts at the Hill end on a trajectory towards Nally, Croke Park became the Bull Run in Pamp lona. The Penn State bench burst on to the pitch and cheerleaders were thrown in the air.

Central Florida coach George O’Leary, a likable straight-shooter, said his Florida team didn’t “move the chain” enough (make yards).

He then dismissed any influence of the tight ends and wide receivers as a load of ballyhoo before lionising a quarterback headed for the NFL. Unusually for a coach the praise was aimed at not his own Holman but Hackenberg.

“The key is not them,” said O’Leary of his big men and fast men. “The key is 14 (Hack). I think everyone in the country would like to have him as far as delivering the ball.”

It ended as it should have, as you would expect. Big and noisy. They don’t do soft landings. Exploding ticker tape and glitter sprayed from the roof of the Hogan Stand on to the presentation ceremony as people left, lost in and loving the brashness, few of them thinking of Kerry or Mayo.