Hakan Sukur, Turkey's record goalscorer, had a disturbing message for Irish fans before moving behind locked gates for the final phase of Turkey's preparations for today's sell-out game in the Ataturk Stadium. Sukur's inability to add to his 26 goals in internationals was for many Turks a blight on their team's performance in the first game at Lansdowne Road. Now he is promising to atone for this.

"I feel inside me that I am going to score," he said. "The Irish defenders are very strong, but I think we should have got more goals in Dublin. Now is our chance to prove it." The Turks are feeling the tension as the competition for places in the European Championship finals next summer builds to a climax. The telecast of last Saturday's game at Lansdowne Road was said to have been watched by almost 50 per cent of the Turkish population.

Their 1-0 win over Holland at Bursa attracted more viewers than any other sporting event in the history of Turkish television. And local officials here are estimating another huge audience for the Ireland game. Hundreds of Irish fans are expected here for the game, and during his press conference yesterday Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy told of a letter he received recently from one male supporter.

It informed him that he wished to spend his summer holidays next year watching Ireland play in the Euro 2000 finals in Holland and Belgium. The alternative would be to spend a fortnight in Spain - and he didn't like beaches or sunshine, women or wine.

Mustafa Denizli, the Turkey manager, has graver reasons for wishing to take his team to the finals. Denizli told a Turkish newspaper: "Wewill win in Bursa. And we will dedicate our success to the victims of the earthquakes in our country." In the same article Denizli rubbished the notion that with an away goal already scored his team would amend their match plan to avoid conceding a score this evening.

"We defend when we have to, but we are a flair team who win games through attack," he said. "We did not play defensively in Dublin and will not do so now in front of our own supporters". He then sought to disown a statement attributed to one of his players after the Lansdowne Road game, that the Turks would win the return 5-0. "I don't think that statement was ever made," he said. "We respect the Irish as strong fighters who play the game like teams in Britain.

"There are not as good technically as our players but they fight from the heart. How can we say we will win easily. Yes, we hope so, but it's going to be another difficult game for us."

A measure of the pressure building on the home team to deliver the result coveted by an entire nation is that Denizli saw fit to take his players to the Bursaspor complex, some 25 miles outside the city, where they are apparently out of contact with the world at large.

They will remain cloistered until some two hours before the game.