GREEN GIANTS OF NEW YORK

The Big Apple stage has always brought the best out of Irish sporting greats

- Roy CURTIS

THE gravitational pull of New York was at its most primal the night across the state line in Jersey that Paul McGrath decommissioned Roberto Di Baggio, pickpocketing the Italian's six-shooters and sending them to sleep with the Hudson fishes.

Manhattan's glass towers gleamed in the distance, but not with the same skyscraping sheen as McGrath in that World Cup summer of 1994 - an athlete at his crowning moment, announcing himself among the higher citizens of the world.

Ray Houghton's goal planted an Irish tricolour on the Giants Stadium turf and what seemed like the greater part of the entire Celtic tribe floated back towards the Gotham night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's line from The Great Gatsby in all our hearts.

"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world."

As a boisterous, anarchic Friday announced that the Ryder Cup had come to New York, as Shane Lowry talked of the shiver of anticipation that invades his bones each time he touches down at JFK, it felt like a moment to explore the special relationship between Irish sport and that most pulsating, over-caffeinated, twinkling and bombastic of all American towns.

A place where Katie Taylor and Éamonn Coghlan authored moments so flawless they made you wonder if Madison Garden had been constructed for them alone.

A town so tangled up in green, one so embroidered into the fabric of a tiny island 3,000 miles to its eastern flank that it once staged an All-Ireland football final.

Alicia Keys's love poem to her city resonates on this side of the pond, too: These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you.

Again and again in sport, it has been The Big Apple of Irish eyes.