Fans hatch plans A and C for finals
While 10 years of qualification headaches for the Irish team finally ended last night, the nightmare is just beginning for fans.
With jobs and money scarce, the finals will offer the nation a summer of sporting highs and lows. For those intending to travel, December 2 is D-Day.
Forget the budget and the pain it is likely to bring, December 2 is the day the draw for the group stages of the tournament will take place. It is crucial in terms of the cost and ease of getting to see Trap’s charges take on Europe’s finest.
Group A is the dream draw for Irish, as all the games in this group will be played in either Warsaw or Wroclaw, which are located some 340km apart. Both these cities are well known to Irish people, as well as to Polish emigrants here.
As a result, both Ryanair and Aer Lingus offer direct flights to both cities. As of yesterday, a return flight for June to Wroclaw with Ryanair was €218, while a return flight with Aer Lingus to Warsaw for the same period was €266.
Group C is also a good draw as all these games will be played in Poland too, in Poznan and Gdansk, 300km up the road.
Ryanair flights are available at €179 return to Gdansk in June. Flights to Poznan are yet to be advertised.
Hostels in Polish cities are quoted from as little as €10 a night. However, this is likely to change come June.
So far so good, fans will think. Not so. Group B is the nightmare draw, while Group D is not far behind.
If Ireland are drawn in either group, all games will be played in Ukraine, an altogether trickier prospect. There are no direct flights from Ireland, so getting there will involve some planning and complex cross-country trips.
Matches in Group B will be played in either Lviv or Kharkov, which are more than 1,000km or a 10-hour drive apart.
Group D matches are will be played in Kiev or Donetsk, some 750km to the south-east.
An option for the cash-strapped fan is to drive or, better still, buy a second-hand campervan, which eliminates the problem of accommodation.
To drive from Dublin to Lviv in takes about 28 hours. Driving to Kharkov is tougher at 45 hours. The drive to Kiev, meanwhile, will take 35 hours, while Donetsk is 44 hours.
At this stage, of course, there is nothing fans can do except wait until the December 2 draw and pray for Poland. Cheaper, easier to get to, we will take Group A or C just fine.
IRELAND’S success at the Rugby World Cup has been credited with a major bounce in consumer sentiment.
Strong growth data and hopes for an ECB rates cut have also seen the KBC/ESRI consumer sentiment index rise to 63.7 last month from 53.3 in October. This is the strongest level since July last year.
* The national dish is Borsch.
* The entire country is a flat plain.
* Ukraine is home to one of the world’s most ancient civilisations, the Trypillian civilisation, which existed between 5500BC and 2750BC.
* Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is a unique, Unesco-listed monastery complex located in Kiev, which has a unique system of underground passages creating a underground streetscape.
* The Arsenalna metro station in Kiev is the deepest in the world — 105m underground. It also contains shelters built in Soviet times for Communist Party elite.
* The McDonalds near Kiev railway station is the third most visited in the world’s chain.
* The national anthem consists of only six lines. The remaining verses, “We’ll stand, brothers, in bloody battle, from the Syan to the Don”, implies a claim to the territories of Russia and Poland.
* Ukraine has the world’s largest reserves of manganese ore — 2.3 billion tons, about 11% of all deposits of the world.
* The world’s heaviest aircraft, An-225 Mriya is created by Kiev’s Antonov design bureau. The plane was designed to airlift space shuttles and rocket boosters.
* The oldest known map and the most ancient Homo sapien settlement were found in the village of Mezhireche. They are 15,000 years old. The map is cut out of the bones of a mammoth. The settlement is made of the same material.
* The ninth largest country in Europe.
* Seventeen Nobel Prize winners, including four peace prizes and five in literature.
* Marie Curie (born Maria Sklodowska; 1867-1934), the first and only Nobel Laureate in two different sciences and first female professor at Sorbonne University.
* Polish-born astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first person to propose the Earth was not the centre of the universe.
* Wroclaw hosts an annual city-wide medieval festival that includes jousts, horse archery and medieval dance.
* Marzanna is a tradition where people weave straw dolls and decorate them with ribbons representing the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
* In many Polish pizzerias, pizza does not contain tomato sauce. It instead comes on the side.
* Przystanek Woodstock is the biggest open-air music festival in Europe.
* The most popular name for a dog in Poland is Burek, meaning a brownish-grey colour.
* The population of Poland is 39 million.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
