Croke Park hosted two sporting events in 2026 that will rank among the greatest this venue, with nearly 150 years of history behind it, will ever witness. The first was Mayo winning the All-Ireland football championship after 75 years; the second was Katie Taylor’s homecoming and final goodbye to her Irish fans. Tickets sold out in June as soon as they went on sale. On Saturday afternoon there were many touts at Gill’s Corner outside Croke Park looking for tickets to buy, but nobody was selling. One tout was selling plastic knock-offs of Taylor’s 2012 Olympics gold medal for €5. This was an occasion for old-school, unabashed Irish patriotism. It had a distinct feel of Italia 90 about it for a crowd that was mostly too young to remember Ireland’s sporting coming of age. Put ’Em Under Pressure, the anthem of Italia 90, was regularly played at intervals and the “olé, olé, olé” chants started long before the main event - Taylor’s fight against French opponent Flora Pili. It was a festival of Irishness. Bono and Rory McIlroy were among those who wished Taylor well in messages broadcast on the big screen, but the biggest cheer of all was for Irish sportsman of the moment Troy Parrott, who scored the winner against Real Madrid for Real Betis on Friday night. The long undercard featured a number of prominent Irish boxers but there was a bizarre ending to the penultimate fight after just one minute and 22 seconds. Heavyweight Thomas Carty was caught on the back of his head by opponent Dave Allen and disappeared through the ropes. He never reappeared and the fight was deemed a no contest. The crowd lustily booed this premature ending that left a lot of spare time before the Taylor fight. Westlife, a long-time fixture of the Croke Park stage, came out in their white suits singing A World of Our Own and You Raise Me Up, the lyrics of which were tweaked to flatter the crowd: “You raised her up to more than she could be.”Amanda Dunne, Stephen Finney, Conor Heslin, Laura Sheridan and Christopher Bowe in Dublin before the fight They were followed by cousins and Irish musical royalty Aoife Scott and Roisin O, who sang Grace with an audience who knew all the words and were pumped with patriotic fervour. Their rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann, backed by the fervent crowd, will linger long in the memory for those who were there. Then the challenger emerged in her French tricolour braids to some pantomime boos from the audience. She was some minutes in the ring as Taylor paraded slowly and deliberately on a raised ramp from the Canal End trailed by a forest of smartphones. Her entourage carried her belts and her promoter Eddie Hearn wore a tricolour scarf. Fireworks exploded around Croke Park, their smoke trails lingering above the old grounds in what was a balmy, beautiful early autumn night. This was sporting pageantry of the highest order and it felt valedictory. There was still a fight to be fought, as dreadlocked announcer David Diamanté reminded everybody, for “the undisputed super lightweight championship of the world”. The “olé, olé, olé” drowned out his attempts to list all promoters, sponsors and judges. “Katie, Katie, Katie,” they chanted in unison. The Fields of Athenry, the soundtrack of so many Irish sporting events, also made an appearance.Pili played her part and had her moments during the fight, but Kool & The Gang’s Celebration was cranked out of the deafening tannoy before the unanimous verdict of the judges was even delivered. Taylor thanked all those who made such an occasion possible and then went quiet. “Let me just look around,” she said. It was a multigenerational audience who turned out for the fight, many of whom had never been to a boxing match before. Jordan Conroy, Sue Bursey, Carlie Tracey and PJ Conroy at Croke Park Alan Burke and Lorraine Dempsey Many felt Taylor was not just a trailblazer for women in sport, but a feminist figurehead too.“I do a lot of women’s advocacy work in Ireland with Ruth Coppinger and other TDs and [Taylor] is a massive inspiration for us,” Becca Clarke, from Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, said before the fight.Emma Bowden had previously travelled to Manchester to see Taylor fight. “What she has done for women in general, not just women in sport, is amazing,” she said. “Is there any other female athlete in the world who could pack out a place as big as this? She’s phenomenal.Rachel Murphy and Emma Bowden “We were coming up on the bus today and it was packed with women and men. How many men follow female athletes around the world?” Laura Sheridan from Cavan said being at Taylor’s last fight was “something to tell your grandchildren about”.She added: “She is the greatest Irish sports person, she should have been celebrated long before this event. We’ll never get a woman like Katie Taylor again.”