SPORT TRAVEL DISRUPTION:WHILE THE Irish sporting calendar has escaped relatively unscathed, the cloud of volcanic ash high in the skies continues to cast a giant shadow across Ireland and much of mainland Europe from a logistical point of view.

Uefa’s decision to proceed with the four Champions League and Europa League semi-finals this week may be good news for armchair fans, but, with flights still grounded across the Continent, it has thrown the travel plans of clubs and away supporters into disarray.

In the Europa League, Fulham manager Roy Hodgson certainly wasn’t looking forward to a potential 580-mile jaunt to Hamburg, and will be hoping flight restrictions are lifted so a private jet can make the 95-minute journey instead.

Liverpool face an even tougher journey across land and sea for their meeting with Atletico Madrid. It took Fernando Torres almost 30 hours to reach the Spanish capital for a knee operation on Sunday night.

Liverpool hope to travel by coach and train to Bordeaux and fly the rest of the way.

Barcelona and Lyon, due to face Inter Milan and Bayern Munich in the last four of the Champions League, left nothing to chance and both have already embarked on their respective coach trips.

Closer to home, officials at Punchestown, already facing into the teeth of a biting recession, are likely to take a further hit this week with overseas visitor numbers almost certain to be down.

Up to 15,000 punters from Britain have made the annual pilgrimage to the Co Kildare venue in recent years, but many are likely to cancel plans as air travel remains severely restricted at best, non-existent at worst.

Barring a change in conditions, Leinster will be forced to make the short ferry crossing from Belfast for Friday night’s Magners League match in Glasgow, and Connacht are also expected to take to the boat for Sunday’s meeting with the Scarlets in Llanelli.

The travel chaos has also led to a number of GAA training camps being cancelled. Having retained their status in the top flight of the Allianz National Hurling League, the Dublin squad had been due to spend the week at a training camp on the Algarve. But with few flights out of Dublin, manager Anthony Daly will take his players to Mayo.

It was a similar story for the Tipperary, who had to shelve plans for a return trip to the Campoamor resort near Torrevieja, just up the road from La Manga, Spain.

Instead, they will spend the week at Carton House in Maynooth, the plush facility at which Real Madrid chose to base themselves before last year’s friendly with Shamrock Rovers.

In golf, the European Women’s Nations Cup in Alicante will proceed with the competitors forced to get there by hook or by crook. For the Irish team of Hazel Kavanagh and Rebecca Coakley, that meant a marathon car and ferry journey across Britain and down through France and Spain.

With the European Tour already in the midst of a Far East swing, the Ballantine’s Championship in Korea should be relatively unaffected, but the Moroccan Golf Classic on the Challenge Tour has been postponed.

Even Pádraig Harrington, not due back in action until Quail Hollow on the PGA Tour next weekend, has seen plans fall by the wayside. The Dubliner had planned a recce at Wentworth to assess the changes ahead of next month’s PGA Championship, but the flight restrictions put paid to that.

A question mark continues to hang over the Irish women’s hockey team’s World Cup Qualifiers in Chile. Ireland, Scotland and Malaysia, three of the five teams involved, have been unable to make the journey to South America just four days before the event gets under way.

The International Hockey Federation met yesterday and will continue to monitor the situation before deciding whether to change the April 24th start date.

In an effort to avoid a situation similar to the Great Ireland Run, where a number of elite athletes were unable to make it to the Phoenix Park last weekend, organisers of the London Marathon are already looking at alternative ways to get runners to the city in time for the race on Sunday.

But defending champions Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya and Germany’s Irina Mikitenko, along with hundreds of other athletes are likely to miss out if the disruption continues.

Ireland may already be safely ensconced in the Caribbean ahead of the World Twenty20 cricket tournament, but Group D rivals England are not due to leave until Sunday and the ECB are “keeping an eye on things”.

Afghanistan have already had their travel plans delayed but are expected to arrive in time.

In motor sport, the majority of the Formula One outfits and tonnes of equipment remain stranded in China following Sunday’s grand prix in Shanghai. While many drivers are making the most of the enforced break, taking impromptu holidays in the region, some 1,000 team personnel are forced to play a waiting game.

Sunday’s Japanese leg of the MotoGP series has been postponed until October.

And, finally, a decision will be made today on whether the New York minor footballers will travel to Ireland to take on Galway in the Connacht championship at the weekend.