Super Bowl XLV preview

It’s official. After 256 regular season games, four Wild-card play-offs, four Divisional match-ups and two Conference Championships, we now have the names of the two teams who will contest the greatest sporting competition on earth.

The 45th Super Bowl will see three-time champs the Green Bay Packers go head-to-head with six-time winners the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cowboys Stadium on Sunday, 6 February.
And if the game is anything like last season’s regular season meeting, where the Steelers ran-out 37-36 winners, we’ll be in for a real treat.

It will be a battle of two great defences; ball-hawk and defensive MVP Troy Polamalu on one side, and hard-hitting Clay Matthews on the other.

Will Rodgers finally step out of Brett Favre’s shadow and help the Packers bring the Vince Lombardi trophy back home?

Is Ben Roethlisberger going to become a three-time Super Bowl winner at the age of 28?
And will the new Cowboys Stadium break the record for the highest number of spectators at the NFL’s showpiece event?

The Packers – and Aaron Rodgers in particular – are on a hot streak.

After limping into the post-season on the back of a year hampered by injuries to key players, Mike McCarthy’s team have been steadily gathering momentum.

Impressive displays to dispose of the number 1, 2 and 3 seeds – all away from home thanks to a sixth seed birth – have taken them to the brink of yet another world title.

Their opponents, the Steelers, always seem to excel in the play-offs. They beat out Baltimore to win the AFC North, and with it earned the number two seed and a first round bye.

In the Divisional game against the Ravens they battled back from a 21-point half-time deficit to stun their fierce rivals, before stunting the progress of the Jets – who once again fell one game short of the big one.

Now only the NFL’s in-form team stand between them and a return to the top of the pile – and their third Super Bowl ring in the past six years.

Rodgers v Roethlisberger; Matthews v Harrison; Polamalu v Williams; McCarthy v Tomlin. To find out who leads their team to victory on the greatest stage on earth, check out Sky Sports 1 and BBC One this Sunday.