Thousands of football supporters travelling by rail to Sunday's All-Ireland final in Croke Park will be paying more than three times the fares available at other times, and could pay up to nine times the standard match ticket prices.
Iarnród Éireann said it will not be applying the usual internet based discounts to tickets for supporters travelling to and from Dublin for Sunday's senior football final.
A spokeswoman said "this is a very busy weekend so we wouldn't be offering many discounted fares on the web".
Cheapest available one way tickets on two special match trains on Saturday and one on Sunday morning, are priced at €37, when booked online. A return ticket is €72. But Iarnród Éireann web fares for previous weekends and weekend immediately after the match were advertised as low as €10 one way.
There is not much joy on the ticket price front either, with black market ticket trade remaining brisk - despite warnings from the GAA.
A pair of premium seats monitored by The Irish Times were sold on eBay on Tuesday for €1,060 while a similar pair were being sold on needaticket.ie for €1,600. That is almost nine times the €90 most expensive price from official GAA ticket outlets. Some websites were offering to raffle match tickets at €10 per raffle ticket. None of the sites revealed how many raffle tickets would be issued.
The GAA has warned that where it is aware of a ticket being sold in this way it may cancel the ticket and issue a replacement. This would leave holders of such tickets without access to Croke Park.
But if Kerry supporters are being asked to pay through the nose, it would appear that those noses are not out of joint.
Kerry GAA county committee chairman Jerome Conway said supporters would be "more anxious about getting a train ticket than getting a ticket for Croke Park". He said in the past match ticket holders had been left without a train ticket and "no way of getting to Dublin". This year he said Iarnród Éireann had laid on a lot of extra capacity and supporters were relieved. He said the price at €72 was the standard five day return which he frequently paid as someone who travelled regularly.
A spokesman for the county board said there was a "tremendously positive air in Kerry since Killarney won the National Tidy Towns award". He said people "need something to bring joy and put a spring in their step" and supporters "would have that little bit of pride that we have got to an all-Ireland final as well".
Indeed it certainly looks as if thousands of Kerry people will be heading to Dublin with tickets for the three special match trains selling out rapidly.
Strangely, Irish Rail has confirmed there will be just one special match train making the return journey. The company spokeswoman said it was likely many supporters would return on later days.
