THE Police played the biggest show of their world tour at Dublin's Croke Park on Saturday night, as 82,000 fans clamored into the stadium to get a long-lost dose of the band's hits such as "Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle." Though the show by and large well-reviewed in the Irish media, the bigger news came on Saturday afternoon, when the band's guitarist Andy Summers told reporters that the band may record another album next year. It would be their first since the breakup in 1984.

"It's sort of like living with the elephant in the room. I would see it as a challenge, to make an absolutely brilliant pop album at this stage of our career, and that would be something quite remarkable," said Summers, who was signing copies of his book I'll Be Watching You: Inside The Police 1980-1983, which contains Summers' photos of the legendary band taken during that time.

Sting said he was glad to be performing in Ireland. "It's good to be back in Dublin, to be back in Ireland. We used to live here," he said. The band resided in Ireland for a time as tax exiles at the height of their fame, but they were busy at work as well. The classic song "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" was written there.

"I wrote this song in Connemara . . . Roundstone . . . near Clifden in Co Galway," Sting told the fans.

Summers, interestingly, doesn't have the fond memories of Ireland that Sting seems to have. He wrote an autobiography last year called One Train Later in which he lamented his Irish life: "The harsh reality of grey weather, bone-chilling, damp biting wind and bad food all to beat the taxman.

"There was a lot of anti-British feeling and I had to put up with that, but you do feel an affinity with the place. I did love Ireland."

And absence makes the heart grow fonder. "I called my wife and I said how much I liked Ireland. I'd love to come back and live here again," he said.