Gardaí in Co Tipperary have not yet established the identity of a man whose naked body was found in a hurling field in Thurles on Sunday evening.
Supt Tony Coogan, who is leading the investigation, is treating the death as "suspicious" but declined further comment until receiving the results of a postmortem which was due to be carried out at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick last night.
It is understood that a man and a woman, believed to be in their 30s, had been camping in a corner of the Railway Field on the Nenagh Road for the past two weeks.
The field, just yards from Semple Stadium and beside the Dublin-Cork railway line, is used by students at the local CBS school for hurling training but the school was closed for the Easter holidays.
At 7.30pm on Sunday two local men, brothers Christy and Patrick Jordan, were walking their dogs in the area when they noticed that the tent had gone.
Christy Jordan said: "We went up to investigate and found a body on the ground, face down and not a stitch on him."
Neither of the men had a mobile phone and they called out to people playing football at the nearby Gortataggart estate.
Cecil Black, who went to the scene, contacted gardaí after seeing "a naked body lying on the ground". He said the body was partially covered in grass and had "dirt thrown over it". The "tent was gone", he added, "but the pegs were still in the ground".
There were also traces of a bonfire. He said "the last time we saw the tent was Friday". A neighbour, who declined to be named, said the man, who "had an accent which was not Tipperary" and who lived in the tent with "a blonde-haired woman", had called to her house on April 7th with a basin and asked for water.
Other local people said they thought the couple were "foreigners or from Cork". Gardaí have appealed for anyone concerned about a missing person to contact them.
Supt Coogan would not respond to questions about the whereabouts of the woman and said no-one had been reported missing.
He could not comment on reports that the couple were Welsh nor that he had been in contact with police in Britain. State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy carried out a preliminary examination of the scene before the body was removed to Limerick at lunchtime.
An estimated 21,500 people were in the area on Sunday en route to the National Hurling League games at Semple Stadium.