Like just about everything else in the tiny city of Tórshavn, getting to see the national team in action is a pricey affair. Seats at tonight's game cost around €45, and the fact prices have been hiked significantly from Saturday's game against Switzerland suggests Brian Kerr's team are a big attraction.
Expectations around the world's smallest capital city are understandably low. The islanders have surprised a few teams since they entered competitive international football a decade and half ago - mainly the Scots, who have twice dropped points here. But since they beat Austria in their first qualifying game, the sport has provided little enough to celebrate for a population that has been increasingly affected in their daily lives by the dramatic decline of the fishing industry.
In football, though, some things are simply universal, and Henrik Larsen, the team's Danish coach - a European Championship winner in 1992 when he was the joint top scorer in the finals tournament - has been criticised for being too defensive.
A draw is again the target tonight, although Kerr must dearly wish his opposite number would change his tactics and go for the win.
Larsen has pretty much a full squad available, but after the 3-1 home defeat by Switzerland, Jon Roi Jacobsen is gone, not because of injury or suspension, but because the 22-year-old is due to sit university exams for his business degree.
The loss of Jacobsen is offset by the return of Julian Johnsson from suspension, but the student's departure highlights the sort of difficulties that Larsen, who is based in Copenhagen, has to cope with ahead of games against some of Europe's leading sides.
Among the team the Dane will field tonight there is the usual assortment of fishermen, teachers, postmen and the like so beloved of television commentators, while just a couple of players, such as Rogvi Jacobsen of Iceland's KR and Coventry City's Claus Jorgensen, are full-time footballers.
Most play in the local league, a competition numerically dominated by clubs from the capital, with its 18,000 population, but which includes teams from several of the 17 islands which, between them, are inhabited by just under of 50,000.
Several of the squad are born in Denmark and a handful also live there, but none plays in the top flight or Superleague. Jacobsen is with first division side FREM, who also have reserve goalkeeper Gunnar Nielsen on their books, while two more of this evening's likely starters, Johan Byrial Hansen and Andrew av Flotum, are with second division outfits.
The team has already taken one point, away to Cyprus, in this campaign, which is in line with the sort of results they have repeatedly achieved against other lowly-ranked nations.
When it comes to playing more accomplished sides, though, the best they have generally done is make life difficult for opponents. Despite managing that much against both the French and Swiss here, they still lost both games by two goals and really should have been beaten by more on each occasion.
So, for the Faroese any sort of result this evening would rank as one of their greatest achievements, while for the Irish anything short of a win in Tórshavn would be the greatest embarrassment suffered by the national team since the goalless draw with Liechtenstein 10 years ago in Eschen.
Much more likely is that the home side will battle hard and emerge with pride while the visitors will take the points. A couple of years ago it took Germany until injury time to get the script right, and it may not go immediately to plan for Kerr's men this evening either. The prospect of the locals holding out for a draw, however, simply doesn't bear thinking about.
