The Irish Rugby Football Union has appealed for charter companies to come forward with aircraft to bring rugby supporters to Bordeaux for the Munster-Toulouse European Cup semi-final in two weeks.
"Any charter companies with planes available, we would be delighted to hear from them," said Mr Benny O'Dowd, president of the IRFU's Munster branch.
"It is a pity that we were not lucky enough to get the home draw and get it in Lansdowne Road because we would have had no trouble filling the 50,000 seats."
The Irish ticket allocation is 8,500, a quarter of the 34,000 capacity of the Bordeaux Stade Lescure municipal ground. But even with supporters willing to dig deep into their pockets and negotiate with their credit union, transport is now the problem and travel agents are trying to book charter flights from Shannon and Cork.
"It has been proving difficult. We would love to be able to help them all, because the more people we can get there, the better," Mr O'Dowd said.
"It is a busy time of the year and there are no flights into Bordeaux or Toulouse from Shannon."
The game, however, will be an unexpected bonanza for the Irish community in France and Germany, and even London, who are expected to travel in force. But getting to France from Ireland remains the problem. Scheduled flights to Paris have been booked out, Mr O'Dowd added.
Some groups are flying through London, while clubs are organising coaches and ferry tickets. Families are also making an outing, going from Cork to Roscoff, or to Portsmouth and then on to San tander, Spain, a relatively short distance from Bordeaux.
The province is well represented, with players from Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, Kerry and Cork. The team is due to travel on Thursday, May 4th, two days before the game, said the official travel agent, Mr Paul Buckley, of Sports and Cultural Tours.
But space is tight on that chartered Boeing 737, which has 148 seats. "We would obviously have preferred a bigger aircraft, but it was not there," he said.
Interest in the game has been unprecedented, Mr Buckley added, in contrast to the Munster-Toulouse game played in Toulouse in December. Yesterday there were 400 queries at his office to be answered after telephone lines jammed on the previous day.
For the moment, these people will have the option of travelling on the Shannon-Bordeaux jumbo-jet day-trip flight, with 470 seats available.
For an away match, the 8,500-ticket allocation compares favourably to the 13,342 capacity of Limerick's Thomond Park.
"People can plan now and get their packages sorted out with the knowledge that tickets will come easily to them," said the MC of Thomond Park, Mr Thomas Creamer.
Last weekend's game against Stade Francais was massively oversubscribed, and the unprecedented singing of The Fields of Athenry was remarked upon.
Some supporters put it down to the large number of corporate tickets sold which had many supporters consigned to pubs for watching the game.
Mr Creamer said it was a sign of the popularisation of the game that the song was being sung. "It has certainly come into Lansdowne Road. It has replaced Molly Malone in Lansdowne Road."
He said the enthusiasm around the game in Munster was now the same as the national interest in the Irish soccer team when Jack Charlton was manager. "The all-Ireland league is certainly very much in the background now in spite of all the activity this weekend. It is a wonderful feeling and it is great to see people so happy and so enthusiastic," he said.
Although Toulouse are European Cup favourites, Limerick bookies are optimistic about Munster's prospects on an occasion when the betting could run into millions.
"I think the Munster team is as strong as the Irish side, bar one player, Brian O'Driscoll," said Mr John Duggan, an oncourse bookmaker. He is offering odds of 9-4 on Munster making it to the final.
For Terry Rogers, Toulouse are even-money favourites, and Munster's odds are 5-1 to win the tournament. "The advantage of the home situation is massive," said one rugby supporter.