Longford Town's preparations for tomorrow night's UEFA Cup, qualifying round, second leg with Liteks Lovech of Bulgaria were in chaos last night after their chartered Balkan Airlines aircraft failed to arrive following a day of waiting, leaving them stranded at Dublin airport.

The team and officials will try to get to Bulgaria on an 8 a.m. flight via Budapest this morning, if enough seats are available. Scheduled to fly out to Sofia at 8 a.m. yesterday morning, the Longford party of 122 people, including the team and supporters, were told they would leave Dublin at 10.30 p.m. last night. By around 7 p.m. last evening it transpired the Balkan Airlines flight was cancelled and frantic calls were made to charter another aircraft but to no avail.

Tour operator, Emerald Hospitality of Dublin, blamed Balkan Airlines for the mess.

Longford manager, Stephen Kenny, was admirably calm about the whole situation. "It's far from ideal, but there is nothing we can do about it. I can't fault the club. They have tried to do things the right way."