Enlarge imageBy Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) - With Ireland's economy facing a second straight year of record recession and unemployment predicted to surge to 17 percent by next year, it has fallen to the nation's rugby players to lift the mood.
"Whenever there's a big match on in Cork or Limerick recently, the big 'R' word has been abandoned for 24 hours," Glen Flanagan, chairman of the Munster Rugby supporters' club, said of the provincial sides' recession-banishing skills.
"It puts everyone in good humour and keeps a lot of them going."
Saturday's all-Irish Heineken Cup semi-final, then, should provide a national tonic, and tickets for the Leinster versus Munster match have been snapped up.
Some 82,500 fans, a world record for a match between clubs, are expected at Dublin's Croke Park when the two teams compete for a place in the European final in Edinburgh against either Cardiff Blues or Leicester.
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It is the latest chapter of Irish rugby's recent success story after the national side secured their first grand slam in 61 years last month and selection for the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa was dominated by Irishmen.
Rugby is providing a vital respite just as soccer did at the tail end of the last recession when Jack Charlton led the country into their first European Championship in 1988 and to a World Cup quarter-final two years later.
"A lot of people have lost their jobs and rugby has proved a good distraction," Alison Moore of the Leinster Supporters' Club told Reuters.
"It's been a positive beacon amongst all the doom and gloom that's around."
LIONS DUTY
There will be little hint of people feeling the pinch at Kiely's pub in the leafy Dublin 4 heartland of Leinster rugby come Saturday afternoon.
Patrons with tickets can take organised double-decker buses from the pub to the match and back again while those without will pack out the bar two hours before kick off, according to manager John O'Brien.
"We've just been lucky in the last couple of months with the rugby," he told Reuters, referring to the struggles that his industry, like many others, is facing.
"Takings will be up big time, as they were for the grand slam decider or any Six Nations weekend. Any staff that we have here, we'll have on."
The May 23 Heineken Cup final will not mark the end of the season for the record 14 Irishmen selected for Lions duty and the extension of rugby into June will also be good for business.
"Rugby's been great for us and it's even better now that the 14 Irish have been picked for the Lions. There'll be a massive interest in the summer," O'Brien said of the 10-match tour to be led by Munster's Paul O'Connell.
Other pubs across Dublin have been raising Munster and Leinster flags but fans have not simply become barflies.
Growing interest in provincial rugby forced European champions Munster to redevelop their Limerick home of Thomond Park last year and led to Leinster upgrading to greater capacity at their RDS ground.
TICKET DEMAND
The extra 30,000 seats made available to the Ireland team following their temporary move from Lansdowne Road to the home of Gaelic sports at Croke Park in 2007 have also been easily filled.
Demand for Saturday's showdown -- a rematch of the 2006 last-four clash -- has been huge. The first 5,000 tickets put on sale to the public were sold in 30 seconds.
"I woke after the quarter-final on Bank Holiday Monday and I had eight missed calls and ten messages and it's only continued since then," Flanagan said.
"I think Munster alone could nearly pack Croke Park."
Leinster's Moore has also been inundated.
"I've got calls from everyone from my mother's electrician to family members looking for tickets," she said.
"They're only going to people in blue though. I don't care if you're my husband -- if you're in red, you're not getting one."
(Editing by Clare Fallon)
