Kicking instructor's wish is to have Irish eyes smiling on Steelers, increase awareness in sport

On the day the Pittsburgh Steelers invited Irish kicking instructor Tadhg Leader and two of his students to attend their game against the Baltimore Ravens, he watched Australian Brad Wing handle the punting duties.

Leader envisions the day when he can watch the Steelers turn to someone from his home country to kick or punt.

“It would be amazing to see an Irish fella with the Steelers,” Leader said. “It would make sense.”

Given the Rooney family’s heritage and the Steelers’ growing association with Ireland, it would be fitting. For now, it’s merely a dream for Leader. In a few years, he thinks it could be a reality.

“We realize this is very ambitious,” he said, “but we do believe in the next five years you might see one or two of our lads trickle into the NFL, the elite of the elite.”

As the founder of Leader Kicking in Ireland, the former professional rugby player is spearheading the effort in making Irish kickers as commonplace in football as Australian punters. His trip to Pittsburgh last weekend was done to bring awareness to his students and to continue fostering a relationship he has built with Daniel Rooney, the team’s director of business development and strategy and grandson of the late Dan Rooney, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

Leader, 31, was accompanied by associate Owen Cahill and two kickers the academy has placed in U.S. colleges: Ross Bolger of Idaho State and Ronan Patterson of Monmouth. A third kicker, Andy Quinn, couldn’t attend last weekend because of his commitment to playing for NFL Academy. A videographer accompanied to group to document the trip, which also included a tour of Acrisure Stadium, the Hall of Honor Museum and UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.

“We have a lot of fans of the sport, but people struggled to find a team to support unless they had a family connection over here,” Leader said. “The Steelers now are dominant. You go to any American football event (in Europe), and Terrible Towels are everywhere. People are behind them. This is another way to increase and speed up that process.”

The only NFL game played in Ireland occurred in the 1997 preseason when the Steelers faced the Chicago Bears at Dublin’s Croke Park. The chance of a return engagement for the Steelers increased in May when the franchise was awarded marketing rights to the country.

After that announcement, Leader sent a message via LinkedIn to Rooney and explained his academy’s mission.

“He reached back out to me, and it has snowballed into a great relationship,” Leader said.

Rooney, who is considered the successor to his father, Steelers president Art Rooney II, attended Ireland’s Kicking King contest in August. Quinn won the event to earn his place on the NFL Academy roster.

Leader’s kicking school was founded a year ago after he was cut by the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the CFL. He had earned that opportunity after training with 23-year NFL veteran kicker John Carney.

“I kicked the game-winner on a Friday, and then on Monday morning, I was released,” he said. “The GM said he wished I had more experience playing the game. Not having college experience kept rearing its head.

“That was the light-bulb moment for me. I thought that Irish lads could do this, but first they had to go to college.”

Leader Kicking attempts to solve that problem by placing Irish kickers in U.S. institutions. Leader began recruiting former rugby players like himself and those who had played Gaelic Football.

“There are 380 Irish 16- to 25-year-olds who never had much interest in the sport other than playing Madden,” he said. “Now we have them champing at the bit with the idea of getting to the U.S. to study.”

Leader Kicking hopes to place six more students on scholarship in American schools next year. It’s a far cry from the success Australia has seen with its punters. One study shows 61 of 133 FBS schools have Aussie punters on their roster.

But it’s a start.

“This has never been done in-house,” Leader said. “It was a challenging first year. There was a lot of skepticism about us given that we had never played a down of football. But we did a tour in May, went to Boston College and UConn and we won all the kicking and punting competitions. That changed everything quickly.”

Another bonus is, beginning in 2024, all NFL teams can carry a 17th player on the practice squad as long as he is from a foreign country. It’s an expansion of the International Player Pathway Program, which placed tight end Christian Scotland-Williamson on the Steelers in 2018.

Leader would like to see one of his students join the franchise in the future.

“They’ve always been on our radar before this partnership was launched given their connections to Ireland and how organic it is,” Leader said. “It would be only natural.”