U2 will not be playing a third date at Croke Park this summer, concert promoters MCD said yesterday.
The majority of the 160,000 tickets for the two Irish dates on the Vertigo Tour were sold out within 50 minutes on the Internet and at Ticketmaster outlets around the country, leaving thousands disappointed.
Hundreds of fans who queued up at St Stephen's Green shopping centre were somewhat luckier, with an additional 1,000 tickets allocated to the Ticketmaster booth there. Each person was entitled to buy up to six tickets.
Upwards of 300 fans queued overnight, with a handful of people having spent more than 24 hours in the queue.
By 8 a.m., when tickets went on sale officially, there were an estimated 3,000 people queuing at 13 Ticketmaster sites around the country.
Mr Vincent Kearns, from Crumlin, a veteran of U2 events, was the first to get tickets at St Stephen's Green, having queued since 5 p.m. on Tuesday. He had already bought four tickets online. He queued along with his two friends, Mr Martin Shanahan from London and Mr David Farrell from Dublin.
"It's a thing we've been doing for the last 15 to 20 years," said Mr Farrell, who first saw the band in 1978. The three were at the top of the queue in November at HMV for the launch of the band's album, and have been at the top of most U2 concert and album queues since the late 1980s. "We call ourselves the U2 three," said Mr Shanahan, who has seen the band on 562 separate occasions.
Mr Eamonn O'Connor, managing director of Ticketmaster, said the demand had been phenomenal. "At ten past eight I had 140,000 people on my Internet site looking to buy tickets. I could have sold out ten of these shows."
Mr Justin Green of MCD, which is organising the concerts, moved to quell speculation about a third date, and said no concert was being planned for Sunday 26th June.
There were hundreds of delighted fans at St Stephen's Green yesterday however.
Grandmother, Ms Breda Sargent from Crumlin, who was there with her daughter, Ms Liz Salmon since Thursday morning, was one of the oldest in the crowd.She went to her first U2 concert in Croke Park 20 years ago, when she accompanied her then 13-year-old son, who couldn't get anybody else to go with him.
Her daughter is pregnant with her second child, and is due on June 2nd, just 22 days before the concert, but is confident she will be there. "I was 11 days early with the first one," she said. Other people in the queue were somewhat reticent, with one young woman wearing a sleeping bag over her head to avoid the crowd of photographers and cameramen covering the queue. "I've been queuing all night, and I've just called in sick to work, so I don't want them to see me on the television."
Mr Tommy Kelly, of Gold Card security, which policed the queue, said there were no incidents throughout the night. "It's been very good humoured."
Mr Kelly said they had turned away a bus-load of 80 children and adults from Liverpool, who were suspected to be part of a ticket tout operation. "Some of them tried to get into the queue again, but we turned them back," he said.