While our national soccer team is preparing to play Australia tonight, thousands of Irish rugby fans Down Under are preparing to watch the forthcoming World Cup on TV.

The remaining tickets for three of Ireland's four pool games went on sale at 9.0 a.m. yesterday morning (midnight Irish time). All 7,000 tickets for the Ireland versus Australia game were gone in 10 minutes. Even more surprising was that the last 3,000 tickets for the match against Namibia went in just under half an hour.

The remaining 7,000 tickets for Ireland's third pool match, against Argentina - likely to decide whether the team advance to the quarter-finals or catch an early plane home - took until early afternoon to sell out.

Shane Harmon, the Irishman who is head of marketing at the Australian Rugby Union, was not surprised at how quickly the tickets sold. "Demand for Ireland matches was absolutely phenomenal," he told The Irish Times.

"We expect full houses for all the Irish matches. The Ireland v Australia game had by far the highest level of interest of any pool match."

This, however, is cold comfort to those who queued in vain or could not get through on the phone or Internet.

Jane McCarthy, a Sydney woman whose parents are Irish, went to a ticket outlet at a suburban shopping mall to have a better chance at getting tickets.

"I got there an hour before the shop opened and there were just three people ahead of me in the queue, so I thought I would get tickets, no worries," she said.

"But the first guy got 10 tickets, the second got eight and when the third guy got to the counter he was told they were all sold out."

There was much criticism of the fact that people were allowed to get 10 each of the unsold tickets, which were returned from rugby boards around the world.

Billy Cantwell, editor of the Irish Echo newspaper in Sydney, said he had seen long queues outside a ticket shop in Bondi Junction (where many Irish backpackers live) at 8.30 the night before. "How unhappy were those guys when probably only the first three or four of them got any tickets?," he commented.

He says the demand was driven by expectations that Ireland will do well. "In some ways it is bigger than the Sydney Olympics from an Irish perspective. Unlike at the Olympics, there is some hope of Irish success, of making the quarter-finals at least."

But every cloud has its silver lining, and in this case the silver will be crossing the counters of publicans all across the Sydney area.

Donnacha Reidy, an Irishman who owns two bars in Sydney, echoes Cantwell in saying that for many the Rugby World Cup will be bigger than the Olympics.

"The lack of tickets is good news for the pubs here.

"If you can't get a ticket you are still going to want to watch the matches with friends in a bar. It's a great boost for tourism in Sydney after Bali, SARS and September 11," he said.

The final 3,000 tickets for the Ireland v Romania match will go on sale tonight at midnight Irish time.