THE IRISH football fans began arriving in the Raekojaplats as the sun began to dip behind the handsome square in the old town. Getting tickets for the match was the chief talking point in Tallinn last night.
“We’ll wear an auld Estonian jersey if we have to,” vowed Brendan O’Brien, who looked perfectly at home in a Celtic jersey, a theatrical leprechaun’s beard and the huge floppy green hats that have distinguished Irish football fans on tour for the past two decades.
Some 1,300 tickets were allocated for the Irish visitors for the cosy 9,000 seat Lillekala stadium, and it is thought that about 3,000 supporters have flown out from Dublin anyway.
Yesterday evening, as the restaurant staff dressed in splendid Estonian traditional costume stood in their doorways looking on in polite mystification as the visitors flocked to the one joint bearing the name of Molly Malone, there seemed to be two distinct views on the availability of tickets.
Those without were pretty optimistic that they could persuade the Estonians to part with theirs – for the right price.
“Just tomorrow walking around,” O’Brien said confidently, “we will pick them up from the locals. I hear they are looking for 75 quid. The cost price is only 16. Most people will pay 75 quid after coming all this way.” But fans already sorted for tickets tended to go for a bleaker assessment of the ticket situation.
“We have tickets,” said Karl Coughlan. “But there are lot of people out here without them and as far as I can see, they’ve no chance. There just seems to be very few about.”
“Two out of the five of us have tickets,” says Caolan Bligh. “We are hopeful of getting a few more.”
There is a sense an entire era – the generation of Given, Duff and Robbie Keane – is spinning like a coin over this two-match play-off against Estonia.
International football is still a new attraction in Estonia but the unexpected progression of the national team to the threshold of the European championships means there will be unprecedented interest in the city and across the country.
For the Irish, it is just the latest chapter in the do-or-die dramas that have come to characterise the team.
“We are here to support the team,” says Barry Herterich from Tramore.
“Locals say the tickets are few and far between. There is a big screen showing the game on the street and, if needs be, we will get all the Irish together there and that’s what matters.”
So a last stand beckons for the assembled Irish fans on what will be a chilly night in Tallinn, whether in the stadium or down the town.