No longer even standing room for Ireland's travelling army

THE hunt for tickets reached epidemic proportions in Basel yesterday when it became increasingly clear that thousands of Irish supporters had made the trip in the hope of solving their access problems at the last moment.

Fans besieged the FAI's temporary headquarters in the Hilton Hotel in the vain search as officials confirmed they had not been able to increase their allocation of 3,000 tickets for the 30,000 capacity Stadium St. Jakob.

Manager Brian Kerr confirmed that he had been regularly approached by fans whenever he left the hotel and he added: "Even some of my closest friends were afraid to ask me for tickets, everybody was under pressure.