If you see someone hyperventilating in the foreign exchange queue at your bank today, they may well be a rugby fan bound for the Stadio Flaminio in Italy this weekend.

Some bank branches have run out of Italian lire and are not taking more orders. The IRFU's full allocation of 5,000 tickets has been snapped up but many more people are planning to buy their tickets in Rome for cash.

The organisation estimates that 10,000 Irish fans will travel to witness Ireland's first match of the Six Nations Championship and their first championship game against Italy on home ground.

Two Dublin fans told The Irish Times they tried five city centre branches for lire without success yesterday and Bank of Ireland has reported heavy demand in Limerick and Cork. An AIB spokesman said the bank was well used to having a rush on a particular currency before major sporting events but the volume of cash people were taking this time was a bit unusual.

AIB was caught by surprise and had experienced some isolated cases of branches running out of lire, he added.

"Even though we had stocked up to a huge extent, some branches have had to repeat stock orders from currency services and we have had to bring out extra supplies," he said.

Bank of Ireland reported a turnover of £800,000 (€1.02 million) or two billion lire in the last two weeks.

A spokesman said the bank was getting supplies out to hotspots and there should not be a supply problem today or tomorrow.

And an IRFU spokesman in Rome advised fans not to worry about lire as his ATM card is working fine.