About 5,000 Limerick fans have travelled to France this weekend to support Munster in their Heineken Cup semi-final clash against Stade Francais. More than 2,000 fans from the province travelled from Shannon since Thursday, on nine charter flights to Lille and on Aer Lingus flights to Paris.
One of the charter flights, operated by JMC, even took in Farranfore airport near Killarney and was due to pick up 100 Kerry supporters this morning, according to Slattery Travel in Tralee.
In Cork the airport manager, Mr Joe O'Connor, was expecting a lively schedule this morning with five charter flights going, including one Boeing 747. "We have about 1,000 passengers altogether on charter flights. We could hazard a guess that another 500 went on scheduled flights," he said.
Some people have also flown to Brussels, and to London, travelling onwards by train. "Several thousand ex-pats in the UK will go across. The Eurostar goes right into Lille from London," said Mr Tony Brassil of Limerick Travel.
"The actual people you will take will bear no relationship to the number of people in the stadium. There are enormous numbers of people taking the car ferry."
Anybody expecting a short break in sunny France was in for a disappointment, however. Conditions in Lille were cold and wet yesterday, according to Mr Pat Geraghty, press officer for the Munster branch. He expected 8,000 people to have travelled from the Republic, only to encounter rain and "dreadful conditions". Many of them have left off buying tickets until this morning.
The pitch had been covered, he said, but the rain would be washed back on to it when covers were removed. "From the point of view of playing conditions, they will not be ideal. It will be very skiddy, with a slippery ball," he said.