Dubliners got into serious fan form for the World Cup at the Gaiety Theatre this week. Studs, the story of a local soccer team and the arrival of a new manager, written by Paul Mercier, was first staged in the SFX Hall in 1986.
It opened on Wednesday to a packed house for a special fund-raiser night for Niall Quinn's charity testimonial match fund.
Geraldine Kearney, the theatre's publicist, was out front with her fiancé, Andrew Collins, greeting the guests. The two met on their way to Galway's Maritime Ball last year and are getting married in Glasthule next month.
Caroline Burgess and Tracey Nugent skipped along in. Seán Mannion and his wife, Ann, were there "for a laugh and a nice relaxing night at the theatre".
Yes, Miriam Matabaro, from the National Lottery, and her friend, Sinéad Fallon, a singer who is recording her first album, would describe themselves as football fanatics.
Are they going to Japan? "We wish," they said in unison.
Gary Lynch, from Darndale in Dublin, who went for an audition for the Passion Machine production of the play in the 1980s, was there to see what he had missed. His wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Janet (13), joined him. What about Japan? "I wish," he said too.
Broadcaster Cathal Póirtéir and his daughter, Siúan (10), were looking foward to the show.
Actors Elaine Cassidy, with a new short hair-cut, and her friend, Zoe Gibney, posed for photographs as they came in.
Cassidy plays a tomboy in the Martin McDonagh play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which opens in the Garrick Theatre in London this week. Hence the hair-cut, she said.