Book early to beat the rush for Cardiff

Privately, pretty much all ERC and Heineken officials bar the French were dreading Castres making the final. At best they'd have brought 3-4,000 supporters to Cardiff on May 25th. And if Castres versus anyone was the nightmare final, Munster versus whoever was the dream final.

That it is now Leicester they will face means, quite simply, that the best supported team in Ireland will be playing the best supported team in England. Leicester, who will become the first side to compete in three finals, brought 14,000 to the second European Cup final in 1997 when they lost to Brive. Accounts vary as to how many were in Twickenham two seasons ago to roar on Munster, with the estimated 20,000 who travelled from Ireland being supplemented by up to 15,000 ex-pats. Already 15,000 tickets out of a capacity of 74,500 have been sold in advance for this final, while as of Friday last all regular ferries and planes to Wales, as well as Bristol, were already booked out.

With many more charters to be booked it will be a bonanza for travel agents. Perhaps because of advance block bookings, as of last Friday there was hardly a hotel room to be had in Cardiff.

ERC will reveal how many tickets are to be made available perhaps today, and expect to have them on sale before the end of the week. Once they knew Munster would be in the final, ERC officials reckoned the final would probably be sold out within a fortnight.

As a superstitious aside, one of the more interesting aspects of the build-up will be the toss of coins for the dressing-rooms, for in eight major football finals at the Millennium Stadium all the winners have changed in the same dressing-room.

At a stroke Munster have effectively kept the season alive for another four weeks where otherwise it would just have fizzled out, although this will be seen as a decidedly mixed blessing by Irish coach Eddie O'Sullivan, bearing in mind the Irish squad departs for New Zealand a week after the final and he's already lost Denis Hickie due to his troublesome back.

For starters, it will add an edge not only to the Cork Constitution-Shannon AIB League final, but also to the outstanding round of interpros. Ravenhill will assuredly be a sell-out for Ulster's remaining game at home to Munster. Originally refixed for May 10th, it could now be moved to the week before the European final, on May 17th.

This in turn would give Munster's walking wounded an extra week to make their return, while admittedly leaving less time to recover from knocks before the final. Poor Anthony Foley cut a forlorn figure as he was still phlegmatically shrugging his left shoulder on their return to Cork airport late on Saturday night - primarily because his right arm was in a sling.

"I've done something to the A/C joint but hopefully, it will be one of those two to three week things," he said. Manager Jerry Holland confirmed it would take a few days to assess but presuming Foley does recover, and that Jim Williams' calf injury does recuperate in the anticipated timespan, then Declan Kidney and co will have a hugely difficult back row selection poser to resolve, given the performances of Alan Quinlan and Donncha O'Callaghan on Saturday.

As for Ronan O'Gara, as the nation saw all too vividly on Saturday, he had 11 stitches inserted in a gaping wound to his left knee and could scarcely walk on Saturday night. It seems highly unlikely that, no less than Con team-mate Williams or prospective opponent Foley, he will be available for next Saturday's AIL decider.