By train, plane and automobile the fans arrived from all points
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Wednesday November 18 2009
They're scared you know. "It's not logical to have 25,000 Irish fans. I do not dream of the Stade de France like this," the French defender Patrice Evra moaned yesterday.
First we had a paltry 8,500 tickets for tonight's crunch tie against Les Bleus. There was to be no repeat of 2004 when Paris was quite unexpectedly annexed by the Irish hordes for a World Cup game.
By the weekend there were suspicions in Paris that some French fans have, let's say, been a little less patriotic and off-loaded their precious dockets for tonight's game.
Then yesterday a French newspaper reported the horror of it all: it could happen again. A third of the 80,000 capacity Stade de France may be occupied by us.
The Irish supporters are doing their bit, and then some, to ensure that whatever happens in the suburb of Saint Denis tonight, everyone will go over the top together.
They came from all points yesterday. As dawn broke over Dublin Airport at 6am, and Cork too, the bridgehead was forming for the first wave of flights to France.
As the 11 players who will take to the pitch tonight ate breakfast in their Portmarnock hotel ahead of an 11am flight, hundreds of supporters were already in the air while others will move out today.
They came through the tunnel too. As the 5.05pm Eurostar from London eased into the vast Gare du Nord station yesterday, numerous UK-based Irish fans alighted from the silver and gold carriages.
John Loftus (48) and his son Damien (14), from north London, are precisely the kind of people Monsieur Evra does not want to see tonight -- they were given the tickets by a French neighbour.
"We're hoping for an early goal and then sure we'll see how it goes," said Wicklow-born businessman Mr Loftus. "If we win, it will obviously go down in history."
Many of the early arrivals headed for O'Sullivan's bar on the Place de Clichy, near the Arc de Triomphe -- just one of the French capital's estimated 90 Irish pubs, but the unofficial Irish fans' HQ.
Some feigned mortification after discovering it is slap next door to the Moulin Rouge, the famously bawdy cabaret complete with semi-naked ladies.
In the pub a military operation has been taking shape to provide supplies for Trap's followers, its scale so vast it could adequately have looked after all of Napoleon's battalions.
The stats are startling: 150 kegs of beer stashed in the basement, that's 15,000 pints and a replacement order on standby when that runs out sometime tonight.
There are slabs of 24 cans of beer on sale for €100 in case the green army can't be bothered to wait at the bar where 37 staff will be on duty to feed and water the rabble.
Outside the pub is parked the RTE 2fm 'Roadcaster', re-branded the 'Trapmobile' for the three days it will spend broadcasting live from Paris.
Manager Ciara Swan, originally from Ashbourne, Co Meath, is overseeing the operation and says even the recession has failed to dampen the fervour for the big game.
She counts it in Irish breakfasts. The bar has ordered enough sausages, rashers and eggs for a week in the expectation the whole greasy lot of it will be eaten in just 24 hours.
Cormac McElwain (37), from Galway, was working in the bar in 2004 when Ireland played France and the police closed three surrounding streets. "Madness," he said. "It'll be the same again."
At the Stade de France just after 6pm last night, Trap gave his last press conference before 'Le Crunch'. The message was simple. "Never say never," said the wily old war horse.
- Ciaran Byrne in Paris
Irish Independent
