As the soccer season kicks off across the water, more Irish fans than ever will travel to watch the matches, writes Shane Hegarty
They'll be buttering the bread for the prawn sandwiches at football grounds across Britain this weekend. With the start of a new season comes the annual migration of Irish football fans, tens of thousands of whom will cross the Irish Sea between now and the last blast of a referee's whistle in May next year.
According to Neil Horgan of Abbey Travel, this has already been their busiest year for pre-bookings, with Celtic matches especially fashionable. While the rest of the travel industry slumps, sports trips are more popular than ever.
Horgan estimates that the numbers of Irish who will travel to Anfield, Elland Road, Old Trafford or Highbury this season could be anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000. Add to this the estimated 3,000 who travel to each of Celtic's home games and the large amounts travelling to Rangers matches.
Only the Scandinavians have as keen an interest. Like us, they grew up with Match of the Day on their television screens and a domestic league that couldn't compare to the glamour across the water. Old Trafford is as busy on match days with Norwegians and Swedes as it is with Irish.
While numbers are up, the methods of travel have changed. The Internet means that fans can now organise their own trips rather than go with package deals, so ferries are back in fashion. Getting tickets is still the great problem, with supporters clubs and travel companies usually the only source. However, buying a ticket to Old Trafford through an agent will mean paying three times the face value, though according to Abbey Travel, Manchester United are the only club to charge this.
Most supporters will be making pilgrimages to teams they have supported since boyhood, but there'll be plenty of football tourists too, keen for a glimpse of Premiership glamour, or those on corporate junkets, getting their dinner and a bit of entertainment before their match, and a good seat to watch the game from. "They have a few drinks and some prawn sandwiches but they don't realise what is going on out on the pitch," as Roy Keane jibed in 2000.
Fathers and sons going to a match together, says Neil Horgan, has always been popular, only it is now more likely that the dad will be going to see his son's favourite team rather than his own.
Where once terraces heaved and dodgy pies were the only snacks available, the heated seats and restaurants of the modern stadium now attract plenty of corporate custom. According to Horgan, hiring an executive box is too expensive for most. An average corporate group is made up of 15 people, costing upwards of €500 a head, and they might be treated to entertainment and food, a visit to the club museum, a free programme and whatever else a company wants to keep clients happy.
It is only the upper end of a changing spectrum. "It has become a social event," adds Horgan. "They're going away for a weekend and it just happens that they are going to a match. There might be one fan, but he'll bring a buddy who doesn't really mind what match he's at."
They want a main event, matches described as A or AA Category. The big games involving Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Leeds United are already sold out. There are fewer takers for the likes of Manchester United versus Charlton. Thanks to the arrival of Damien Duff to a star-packed Chelsea FC, there has been an upsurge in interest in trips to London.
With 1,000 members, Irish Reds is one of the largest Manchester United supporters' clubs in the world, and one of over 50 in Ireland. Its secretary, Eddie Gibbons, began travelling to matches with his father in 1964, and would sleep in Manchester train station on the morning of games. When the club was formed in 1969, it would go to Manchester four times a year, now it takes 100 people to every home match. The club has had its fair share of people joining for a year, getting tickets for one big match then never being seen again. The prawn sandwich brigade often make Old Trafford sound like "a mortuary", says Gibbons, although the supporters' club groups who travel from Ireland, North and South, are quite vocal.
"They don't blame the Irish there, because there are people coming from all over the world. The local supporters, though, do feel a little aggrieved, because it's hard for them to get tickets. There are hardly ever tickets on open sale, and the system allocates tickets to supporters clubs all over, so that the amount of tickets available for Manchester lads has dwindled."
Gibbons has taken the chance to buy shares in the club, buying €40 worth for his dad's 81st birthday last year "just to have them". He insists, though, that the sod of Old Trafford turf he grabbed after a game in 1969, and which he still has in a bag at home, is just as valuable.
The Dublin branch of the Leeds United Supporters' Club considered buying shares, but secretary Michael Verdon says that given their subsequent slide, they are delighted sentiment didn't get in the way of business sense.
When he joined the club 14 years ago, it had 40 members, but today it has 600. He is equally aware that people have tried to use the supporters' club as a "ticket depot", joining just to get their hands on tickets for big games. Verdon says that there is less resentment in Leeds from local fans. "It's almost a home for home for us. There used to be a lot of Paddy-bashing at a time when the Irish were not so popular, but we're now really well accepted."
Henry Molyneaux of the Kerry branch of the Chelsea Supporters' Club says that while they love travelling to Stamford Bridge, they have encountered anti-Irish chants from the hooligan element and have sometimes found themselves amongst Northern-based supporters such as the Chelsea Loyalists and Blues Brothers, who hurl sectarian abuse at Irish players. They've made complaints to Chelsea. "If it's not OK to call someone a black bastard, why is it OK to say Fenian bastard?" he asks.
On the plus side, the millions now being poured into the team have had an immediate effect. "We've already had an increase in membership and inquiries, although we've also been warned that tickets could prove more difficult to come by this year," he says.
Not every supporter heads for the glamour of the Premiership. From Ballybofey, Co Donegal, Bernard Griffin runs Scunthorpe United supporters' club, Irish Iron, committed to a team who finished fifth in Division Three last season.
A town built on the steel industry, Scunthorpe is home to a sizeable Irish community, and many of the members of the supporters' club have followed the team's fortunes and misfortunes for decades. Die-hard fans might travel to five matches a year, sharing the ferry with squabbling Celtic and Rangers fans on their way to Glasgow. Many have bought shares in the club, but unlike supporters of more glamorous teams, they also raise funds not to subsidise trips to matches, but in order to sponsor match balls and players' kits. At the end of the season, the player will sign his jersey and send it to the supporters' club as a thank-you.
There are now 90 members of the club. "A lot of fans are fed up with the pure greed and commercialism of the Premiership and are looking for smaller teams to follow, where it's not just about the glory," says Griffin. He enrolled his son in both the Scunthorpe and Finn Harps supporters' clubs within 10 minutes of the child's birth. "If you don't support your local club, it's pathetic really. A couple of years ago Celtic played St Patrick's Athletic and there were busloads going down from the north to Dublin to support a British team against an Irish team. What other country would you see that in?"