old 55

Well, just got back from Ireland and London too. During my trip I saw Pats and Red Sox caps, shirts and sweatshirts daily. Started in Dublin and not so surprising to see Pats/Sox gear there, but when you are in places like Cashel and Doolin and the Aran Islands and see this stuff, it really hits home how popular the teams are.

BTW - My family and I managed to get to London a day after the Picadilly Circus area car bomb, staying just down the TUBE in the Knightsbridge area. Of course, Glasgow got hit while we were in London. We caught the musical WICKED in London with a terrific cast. Flew out of Heathrow on Tuesday and my understanding is that they closed the airport after our flight left around midday due to another terror threat.

Good to be back in the states, but I'll be traveling again in late July/early August to visit my real home, Massachusetts and NH. Really looking forward to that trip.

Stop Being A Jerk

Dolphins, Raiders as well. Of course, by far the most popular over here are the Yankees...or at least their hats. I'm convinced most people here who own them don't even know what the hat means.

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Why you gotta play it like that?

Seymour93

Pats fans are everywhere... Last December while I was waiting for someone close by the Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, some random guy wearing a Patriots leather jacket walked right past me.

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FloridaHerb

I'm sure that if asked he would have said he'd been a fan since Grogan played.

The_Dragon

The big Irish population that invades Boston every summer always come home as Sox and Pats fans. The NFL is growing all the time in popularity here in Ireland. I definitely meet more and more people who are taking an interest in it. Especially when they start figuring out all the various nuances. And a lot more people are travelling to games as well. Celtic tiger and all that!

old 55

Did most of my touring around County Clare - Cliffs of Moher, Kilarney, Kenmare, Cashel, Dromoland Castle, Bunratty Castle and then the Aran Islands, but lucked out weather wise in that both the Cliffs of Moher and Aran Islands were completely clear when we were there. When we were in Dublin we did enjoy the old Guiness factory too. It had been 20 + years since my last Ireland visit and it was nice to be back again. I did find out that most of my Irish ancestors came from the Kenmare area, but that my last name has been Americanized in its spelling. My mothers maiden name isn't found in any of the Irish genealogy books we searched, but we know more about that history anyway and we know that they went from Ireland to New Foundland before eventually settling in the RI / Massachusetts area.

BTW - someone noted how popular the Raiders and Yankees gear is too. Couldn't prove it by what I saw on this trip. A couple of yankees caps and no raiders at all. Fittingly, on Inishmore, there was a guy with Red Sox cap and a guy with a Yankees cap and they were standing on opposite sides of the street. LOL. I told the tour guide that we had roads like those on Inishmore in the states too and that we called them sidewalks..

SeanBruschi54

England Patriots


***hint they threw away the New***

gomezcat

That's what we all say! The problem with the Internet is that there is no way of knowing who has been a Pats fan since the 80s and who hasn't.

Anyway, to address the original point: yes, there are a lot of Pats fans in the UK, relatively speaking. When I was a teenager in the 80s, Miami, Washington, Chicago and the Raiders were popular.....

As for the baseball caps, I reckon they are just fashion accessories for the huge majority of people who wear them.

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DarrylS

Interestingly when I travel in Mexico, everyone knows about "Big Papi" who is huge along with Tom Brady..

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ironwasp

Mostly it would be true; the vast majority of people expressing an interest in football here, would trace their enthusiasm back to the mid 1980s, which was when the game first gained exposure in the UK.

The game is enjoying a resurgence in popularity and that will be given a huge boost by the Giants-Fins game in London in the fall. And so then we'll have a new generation of fans whose heroes are either Trent Green or Eli Manning

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