So, tickets for the World Rugby Cup quarterfinal match at Lansdowne Road tomorrow will not be issued on the basis of whether or not the applicants have Dublin 4 accents. Nor have the FAI borrowed from the "logic" of the English FA, who said they would only sell tickets for their European qualification soccer match against Scotland only to people who did not have a Scottish accent.

In the run-up to the European Championship play-off against Turkey, the FAI will wait for returns from the leagues, clubs and FAI corporate partners, and then re-issue them for sale. The Irish governing body have been hampered somewhat by FIFA regulations which determine that visiting fans should have a 10 per cent allocation, and the upshot is that since the FAI won't mix fans, supporters of the visitors will have the entire north terrace to themselves, no matter how few arrive. The closing date for returns was yesterday and it will be early November before the numbers for re-allocation is sorted out. The FAI, however, are not expecting too many tickets to come back.