By Noel Baker
Saturday, December 03, 2011
PACK your bags, Joxer, and take the cat out of the sack " you're off to Poland!
Irish fans were last night beetling their brows as they planned next summer's great trek to Poland after the draw for the European Championships placed Giovanni Trapattoni's men in a group with world champions Spain, Italy and Croatia.
It is the first time the Republic has played at a championships since the heady days of Euro '88, and travel agents yesterday reported they had been deluged with requests for information even before yesterday's draw in Kiev.
The first match is against Croatia in Poznan on June 10. No doubt supporters were last night cerebrating over the merits of a package deal versus a cheap flight-and-train combo, while trying to figure out how many zloty to the increasingly useless euro.
Kevin Williams of Abbey Travel Sports, the FAI's official agents, said they had been "inundated" with requests from supporters almost as soon as the fourth goal went in against Estonia in the first leg of the qualifiers.
"We started a database of people who, after we have evaluated the details, we will send them and to date I think there are 1,800 people on it," he said. "A lot of them would be regulars but we would have a lot of people who might have made their own way to games in the past.
"We are starting a saving scheme so if people want they can start saving now and paying off some of the cost before next summer."
Aidan Mullen of the You Boys In Green supporters group said he had booked his flight even before yesterday's draw, and that a visit to the credit union for a "home improvement" loan was on the cards.
Many others supporters are likely to follow suit but a spokesperson for the Irish League of Credit Unions said honesty was the best policy. "The advice we have giving anyone considering travelling is to talk to your credit union now " don't wait."
The message was: start saving now, be up-front about why you need the cash and pay it back over a year or two at most.
Some chance. The last time Joxer got a loan, he was never seen again.
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, December 03, 2011
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