Inside Dublin icon’s New York trip ‘for the 40th birthdays’ as he sees NFL game

BERNARD BROGAN and a few friends are marking turning the big 4-0 by visiting The Big Apple.

The 2010 Footballer of the Year and his pals jetted out stateside on Wednesday.

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However, that’s the first and last Jets reference to crop up from their trip as they took in a New York Giants NFL game against the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday evening.

The NFC East match-up is traditionally one of the most glamorous match-ups in the league due to them being two of the franchises with the biggest national reaches when it comes to TV audiences.

But this is not a vintage year for the Giants-Cowboys rivalry as The G-Men are among the worst sides in the entire league.

Meanwhile Mike McCarthy’s side ought to make the play-offs once again – but their losses to the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens over the season’s opening three weeks set off alarm bells.

Across those two fixtures they conceded a whopping 72 points.

They did take care of business in front of Brogan and Co as they edged out the home side 20-15 in a sloppy affair that was riddled with penalty flags.

But the most consequential outcome to emerge from it may well be an injury to their star pass rusher Micah Parsons who exited via a cart with an ankle injury.

Last night’s victory leaves the five-time Super Bowl champions at 2-2.

It’s early days but it appears unlikely that this’ll be a season where the old nickname of the NFC Beast is uttered too often.

Last season’s other play-off team in the Philadelphia Eagles have looked equally flawed across their three outings so far.

Their opening night win over the Green Bay Packers, which was the first NFL game to ever be played in South America, can almost be thrown out as a meaningless result.

After all, the soccer pitch in Sao Paolo was ill-prepared for the demands of American football and led to a farcical amount of slipping all game.

The speculation around their head coach Nick Sirianni’s status in the locker room only mounted after they conspired to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against the Atlanta Falcons.

And they were walloped by Minnesota 26-3 with the upstart 3-0 Vikings looking like the class of the NFC at this early stage.

It should be noted that neither the Eagles nor the Cowboys sit atop the division at the time of writing.

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Instead it’s the 2-1 Washington Commanders who’ve taken command early doors.

It’s hard to envision them emerging as a genuine Super Bowl contender this year though.

But that’s immaterial in the grand scheme of things for that long bedraggled club as their rookie first-round quarterback Jayden Daniels is already looking like the real deal.

While the number one overall pick in Caleb Williams has yet to live up to the hype for Chicago, Daniels has showcased his top-tier scrambling ability combined with a wide array of pinpoint throws.

On the biggest regular season stage of Monday Night Football he sliced and diced the Cincinnati Bengals like a 10-year veteran to leave Joe Burrow’s squad reeling at 0-3.