Fans have responsibility to use their ticket, says Pauw

Vera Pauw has said Republic of Ireland supporters have a "responsibility" to use their tickets after empty seats were visible at last Thursday's clash with Finland, which had been billed as a sellout.

A record attendance of 6,952 watched Ireland earn a 1-0 win that sent them to the World Cup play-offs at Tallaght Stadium, which caters for up to 8,000 spectators, but areas of empty seats at the ground frustrated Pauw and those fans who were forced to watch on TV because they couldn't get their hands on a ticket.

Over 2,000 tickets were set aside for children through the clubs/schools initiative. The rest went on general sale.

It's accepted that there will be a natural drop-off of fans who do not turn up for matches due to a variety of reason - 5% to 10% generally - but the shortfall was higher than that and it did raise questions. On Thursday the FAI confirmed to RTÉ Sport they plan to review the reasons behind any non-attendance.

"I think it was teams [who didn't show] because there were a series of chairs open," said Pauw, speaking from Slovakia ahead of Tuesday's qualifier.

"They had bought tickets, but they didn't show up. That is a real shame because there were thousands of girls who wanted to come.

"Every ticket was sold. What do you do? Our marketing department are dealing with it, but what do you do? We want to have it accessible for everybody. You can make the tickets more expensive but then you put a lot of pressure on the people who maybe don't have much [money] available.

"You want everybody to be able to attend.

"My honest feeling is it comes back to the decency of the people who buy the tickets, that they know there's thousands of girls crying at home because they couldn't go to the stadium.

"You take responsibility