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Football

04th Dec 2018

Ireland fans will only get 300 tickets for Gibraltar game

Robert Redmond

This will be a difficult one to get tickets for.

The Republic of Ireland’s opening qualification game for Euro 2020 will take place at a 2,300-capacity stadium against Gibraltar.

The Gibraltar Football Association has confirmed that the match, due to take place on Saturday, March 23, will be staged at the Victoria Stadium.

The last time the two teams met, in September 2015 in a qualification game for Euro 2016, the match was played at the Estadio Algarve, a 30,000-seat venue in the south of Portugal.

However, Gibraltar are determined to play their home matches on home soil, rather than 400km away in Portugal.

As a result, Irish fans are likely to be allocated just 300 tickets for the game.

“We played all of our Nations League games in Gibraltar and we are working towards playing all of our European qualifiers here too,” a representative of the Gibraltar FA told the Irish Times.

“It has been good for our fans who don’t have to travel 400 kilometres to see the team play and our results have been much better since we started playing here too.”

Three days after the Gibraltar match, Ireland host Georgia at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.

They then travel to play Denmark in June, a match that appears set to be staged in Copenhagen. Switzerland are Ireland’s other opponents in Group D.

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