Sell-out final is biggest yet

At precisely 3.52 yesterday afternoon in the busy foyer of 62 Lansdowne Road the European Cup final became a sell-out, thereby guaranteeing a competition record crowd of 49,000. The next man up in the queue was told: "Sorry, they were the last two tickets." Applicant 49,001 was yours truly.

With ERC Ltd's first objective duly fulfilled, the Cup organisers could afford a bit of a backslappers' ball at the press conference in the Lansdowne Road stadium itself.

After all, this embattled competition had withstood the English clubs' boycott and the ensuing brickbats that had come ERC's way in a typically vindictive campaign by those clubs.

Roger Pickering, the chairman of ERC, fronted a press conference which was so numerous there wasn't even enough room for everyone at the top table. As a result some of the contingent from the respective finalists had to be accommodated in chairs at ground level.

Pickering pointedly thanked Noel Murphy, "a great supporter of the European Cup" - and of Pickering himself - as well as the finalists, who had been a pleasure to deal with. He'd have been entitled to thank Ulster just for getting to the final, and thus, at a stroke, ensuring the final will be a far bigger success for the organisers than an all-French final would ever have been.

Most of the tickets, 28,000, were sold in Ulster, with Leinster absorbing roughly 8,000 and Munster and Connacht taking up 2,000 or so each. Then allowing for the sponsors, ERC and the IRFU, the remaining 2,600 were sold yesterday. Colomiers may yet return up to 1,000 of their 5,000 allocation.

As regards television coverage, the BBC's Grandstand have come on board, so impressed were they by viewing figures of two million for 30 minutes' highlights of Ulster's semi-final win over Stade Francais 24 hours after the event. They will join RTE, BBC Northern Ireland and FR2 in televising the final live. Whether the TV figures will emulate the 35 million who watched the last two Cup finals is debatable.

The sponsors have weighed in accordingly, ISL increasing their sponsorship for the semi-finals and final, for which the French-based firm Champion (also sponsors of Colomiers), Air France, French Telecom, Guinness, Bank of Ireland, and Ford have also come on board.

The final has transcended mere sport, evidenced by the understanding that Northern Ireland's First Minister, David Trimble, and his deputy Seamus Mallon, are considering travelling to the game.

Mark McCall, still Ulster's spiritual captain if not in fact, observed: "There are so many internationals now - I don't want to devalue them or anything - but this is a Cup final, a complete one-off. The hype up north and I think throughout Ireland is unprecedented. Even for some of the international players, they'll never have gone through anything like this before. So we've got to try and stay calm and cool."

Ulster's odyssey had "lifted the whole of Ulster and Irish rugby" according to Jonathan Bell, who endorsed McCall's view that the collective buzz within the Ulster camp was such that "it's a great feeling going into work on Monday morning." The centre admitted: "To be perfectly honest, I never envisaged us being in the European Cup final."

The same sense of awe came through from the Colomiers contingent of captain Jean-Luc Sadourny, club president Michel Bendichou and coach Jacques Brunel. Brunel commented: "It is a big surprise in France that Colomiers are in the final. The best clubs in France are Stade Francais and Stade Toulousain, who were expected to be in the final."

Winning last season's European Shield, the club's first trophy, was a help in this season's campaign, "but our aim in many ways was to be in the semi-final. To beat Perpignan was an extra bonus for Colomiers."

Colomiers is a young club - 35 years old according to Bendichou - and so overshadowed by neighbouring Toulouse that they normally play in front of about 5-6,000 supporters. "The first target of the club was to develop young talents like Fabien Galthie and Jean-Luc Sadourny, who both started at six years old with the Colomiers club."

In addition to those two and the more recently acquired Marc dal Maso, Colomiers have another nine internationals at various under-age levels. Bendichou said: "I recall the match against Munster when we had five junior players playing in the quarter-final."

With Galthie and Sadourny missing that day, Ulster are likely to face an altogether different proposition than Munster did, more like the one which was widely hailed as the most exciting 15-man side in France when reaching the championship semi-finals and scoring 375 points in nine winning European Conference matches last season; culminating in a 19-13 semi-final win over Stade Francais in the semi-finals and a 43-5 rout of Agen in the decider.

"Jean-Luc had been absent for seven months and Fabien for three months, so both players are not back at full potential now," said Brunel. "But I've got to say they give a lot of confidence to the rest of the team and help the other players by their presence on the pitch."

Brunel has the added distraction of a French championship game with Toulouse this Saturday. Galthie, rated as a 50-50 chance for the final, will definitely miss this game. As Colomiers have never beaten their Big Brothers from Toulouse, their admiration for Ulster's achievement is intensified.

"We know that Ulster has a very good team, having beaten Stade Francais and Stade Toulousain, and therefore we know we will have to be at our best if we are to take the trophy back to France."

Whether the game justifies the tag of `European Club Game of the Century', it's certainly the unlikeliest final pairing in the competition's brief and volatile history. Hey, who needs the English anyway?