There will be 800 empty seats at Lansdowne Road tomorrow, which is disappointing for fans who failed to get tickets for the biggest game in Dublin in years.

The situation derives directly from the failure of the Belgian FA to sell their full quota of 3,500 tickets and, equally crucially, their neglect in overlooking an arrangement they had with the FAI, to sell them in numerical sequence, thereby facilitating a new segregation policy.

The result of that is that there will now be more than 800 spaces in the section of the ground reserved for Belgian supporters and mindful of what happened during England's game against Italy in Rome, Garda authorities are insisting that they cannot now be sold to Irish fans.

"It's a joint decision by the Gardai and ourselves to leave these seats unsold," said Bernard O'Byrne, the FAI's chief executive. "At a time when we could easily have sold out the stadium twice offer, it's unfortunate that it falls this way. But in the doomsday situation of trouble developing in the stadium, we could never have justified a decision based on expediency."